MANAGEMENT SPECIAL The Physics of Fast Execution
Let’s do a thought experiment.
Imagine that you’re standing in the middle of a racquetball court surrounded by
four walls. At your feet is a basketball. First, notice how the basketball just
tends to sit there. That’s called inertia. In order to get the ball to do
something, you have to apply a force to it. In this case, you give it a kick
and the ball rolls along the floor, bounces off the wall, and careens in
another direction before coming to rest again. Next, you walk and retrieve the
ball and bring it back to the center of the court, place it on the floor, and
this time, you give it a really hard kick. What happens? The ball rolls even
faster across the floor, bounces off the wall with more power, and travels
further in a new direction than the first kick. In essence, you just
experienced all three of Newton’s laws of motion.
Newton’s three laws of motion will
shed light on the speed and direction of your organization. If you want to move
your organization forward quickly in a chosen direction, you should understand
these laws and how they apply to business execution. Put another way, if you
want to be successful, work with – not against – the physics.
The
First Law of Motion
Newton’s first law of motion is
about inertia. Inertia is a recognition that an object will tend to do what
it’s been doing, unless acted upon by an imbalanced or outside force. In
our thought experiment, that’s why the ball tends to stay at rest in the middle
of the floor until you do something, like give it a kick. Inertia works in both
ways, however. Once the ball is in motion from the kick, it tends to stay in
motion too, until an outside force such as gravity, friction, or a wall acts
upon it. Once the ball comes to rest, it will remain at rest until it is acted
upon by another force.
Obviously, an organization isn’t a
simple object like a ball. But you can still use the lens of inertia and see
how it impacts an organization. Basically, because of inertia, an organization
will tend to continue to do what it’s been doing unless acted upon by another
force. That is, if your organization is slowed, stymied, or stuck, it will
continue to act that way unless you do something to change it. And the greater
the inertia, the greater the effort required at getting it to move in a new
direction. On the other hand, if your organization is currently experiencing a
lot of momentum, then like a train roaring down the tracks, it will be hard to
slow down. Inertia can work in your favor too.
About the Physics
In Newtonian physics, “force” is a
push or a pull on an object and is defined as either “balanced” or
“imbalanced.” An imbalanced force is one in which either the push or the pull
exerts an unequal force and cause the object to move. If all forces are equal
or balanced, there is no motion.
In Organizational Physics, a “force”
is not a push or a pull on an object, but a force of change applied to an
organization. The force in this case is the Producing, Stabilizing, Innovating,
or Unifying force or some combination of these.
Just as in Newtonian physics, one or
more of the forces must be imbalanced in order to effect change. For example,
if you want to drive your organization forward in terms of productivity, you’ll
need to apply more Producing force and less of the others. To have the
organization become more stable, you’ll need more of the Stabilizing force. To
help it discover new opportunities and avoid future threats, you’ll need to amp
up the Innovating force. And to keep the organization unified as a whole,
you’ll need the Unifying force at work. Balancing and unbalancing the right
forces in the right sequence, while keeping entropy low and integration high,
is the art and science of Organizational Physics.
The
Second Law of Motion
Newton’s second law of motion is
about the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. In our thought
experiment, when you kicked the basketball harder, it had more acceleration and
went further. There’s an equation in physics that explains this and is written
F=MA (Force equals Mass times Acceleration). Basically, F=MA tells us that if
you take two objects of the same mass and hit one with force, you’ll have
acceleration. If you hit the other with more force, you’ll have more
acceleration. That’s why if you were to take two identical basketballs and kick
one really hard, it would accelerate to a certain speed and travel a set
distance. Kick the other one less hard and it will accelerate to a slower speed
and travel less distance.
While any frustrated CEO would
surely love to simply kick their organization in the ass to get it to
accelerate, it’s obvious that that’s not how things work. But why is that? Why
can’t a CEO, a teacher, or a parent apply a force of change to the organization
and make it move quickly and easily just like a ball being kicked? If F=MA,
then why don’t your kids pick up their toys when you tell them to? Why doesn’t
your sales team respond to the force of your incentive plan? Why won’t the
market readily respond to the appeal of your advertising?
The answer is not that an
organization isn’t a physical object like a ball. The answer is this: Mass is
not size or volume. Mass is resistance to change. So the reason an
organization, or a person, or a market is relatively hard or easy to move is
due to its inertia or resistance to change. If the organization has a high
mass, there’s plenty of visible and invisible resistance to change and it will
be very difficult to get it to alter its behavior. If the mass is low, then
there’s little resistance to change, which will come easily. This is an
important distinction. Just because a Fortune 500 company is really “large,”
does not mean its mass is necessarily big. Or, just because a family of four is
relatively “small,” doesn’t mean that its mass is automatically light.
Here’s an example to show why mass
is resistance to change and not size or volume. The United States of America is
a very large, complex organization. Imagine that you have been elected
President. You want to implement changes that you believe will benefit all.
However, there are over 300 million people, each with different levels of
needs, wants, desires, and perceptions, who are all represented by different
politicians, who are in turn supported by different corporations and political action
groups. Your legislative agenda is seen as beneficial to some segments and as a
terrible loss to others. Therefore, the mass is very high. Even though you’re
the President, it’s very, very hard to push your agenda forward because the
resistance to change is so great.
There’s a saying in Washington:
“Never lose the opportunity of a good crisis.” What does this mean? When
there’s a crisis, the normal resistance to change is lowered because the system
is under threat. When this occurs, it becomes much easier to get new
legislation passed. For example, after the 9/11 crisis in the United States,
new legislation called the Patriot Act was quickly passed. This legislation
strictly curtailed civil and constitutional liberties and would have been
unthinkable without a preceding crisis that first reduced the resistance to
change.
I’m not advocating that you create
crises to get your organization to do something differently. Rather, I’m making
the point that mass is not size or volume but resistance to change – and even a
very large organization, such as a country, will move quickly in a new
direction if the resistance to change is low enough. Once the organization gets
moving in that new direction, it will tend to stay on that course until another
force causes it to stop or change.
The
Third Law of Motion
Newton’s third law of motion
recognizes that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
That’s why, when the basketball in our experiment hits the wall, it careens off
in the opposite direction from which it struck. If the ball is coming quickly
into the wall, it will travel far in the opposite direction. If it’s coming
slowly into the wall, it will travel less distance in the opposite direction.
Action and reaction are the essence of the third law of motion.
Therefore, when you’re implementing
change in one area of your organization, there will always be an equal and
opposite reaction in another. If you’re not careful, the opposite reaction can
also slow the speed and direction of your organization.
For example, imagine that your
business is expanding rapidly. Congratulations! This is something you’ve wanted
for a long time and you’ve worked very hard at it. You’ve finally got the
momentum you were seeking. But guess what happens next? Faced with the new
growth, the business’ administrative systems and people are falling apart and
must be managed to keep pace. That’s an equal and opposite reaction. If you
don’t manage the reaction well, it will act as a drag on your momentum. Or,
with all the work and effort you’ve put into the business, your family life is
stretched thin. If you can’t find a way to restore harmony, the family system
will suffer from an equal and opposite reaction to your booming business.
The
Secret to Executing Fast
In order for an organization to
accelerate momentum, there are really only two things that must occur: The
organization must make good decisions and implement them quickly. That
is, if the organization makes a good decision and implements it quickly, and
then makes another good decision and implements that one quickly, then like a
train picking up speed, it will increase its momentum. Pretty soon it will be
flying down the tracks and hard to stop. However, if it implements a bad
decision, it will destroy momentum. Even worse, if it implements a bad decision
quickly, it will derail completely. Conversely, if it makes a good decision but
takes too long to implement it, then its momentum will decelerate too. Good
decisions implemented fast are the key to organizational momentum.
So how do you make good decisions
and implement them quickly? The secret lies in how the organization’s mass is
managed. That is, if the mass is manageable, then it’s easy to apply a force of
change and get the organization to do something new. Within organizational
dynamics, the challenge in managing mass is that resistance to change is
scattered throughout the organization. It lies within the individuals making
the decisions, those doing the work, and those who can help, hinder, or influence
the results. Therefore, no matter how much or what type of force you attempt to
apply, when the organizational mass is widely dispersed, there’s nothing that
can be leveraged to effectively push or pull against the organizational
inertia.
Think of it like this — the reason
that your organization doesn’t behave like an object — a basketball, for
example — is because its mass is scattered all about. While a basketball is
neatly self-contained and you can move it at will, your organization can feel
more like a bunch of shattered glass loosely strewn about. With such a
dispersal of mass, no matter how much of a force of change you try to apply, it
won’t be very responsive.
If it was possible to gather the
pieces of glass and glue them back together – in other words, to make them
behave like a ball again – then it would be easy to give that ball a push.
Similarly, if you were able to gather in the organizational mass, then it would
begin to behave like a ball and change its speed and direction. Once you gather
in the mass and reduce the resistance to change, you can then hit it with a
force, such as a decision or a directive, and it will tend to rapidly
accelerate in a new direction.
Aligning
the Execution Diamond to Increase Organizational Momentum
In order to have true momentum, the
organization must have its vision & values, structure, processes, and
people in alignment. (M) is the mass of the organization:
There are four basic subsystems of
an organization that help to keep the mass self-contained and malleable, rather
than scattered and resistant. These four subsystems, called the Execution
Diamond, are the organization’s Vision and Values, the organizational Structure
or design, the decision-making and implementation Process, and thePeople
and teams involved. Think of these subsystems like a corral or a boundary that
helps to keep the organizational mass self-contained.
So what are you trying to accomplish
with these subsystems? In a word: Alignment. Your objective is to align each of
these subsystems with your chosen strategy. By creating alignment the
organization’s mass will be contained and headed in one direction. But without
it, your organization will experience friction that prevents it from
accelerating. In the worst-case scenario, it will eventually cease to function
altogether. This means that if you want a fast-moving organization that goes in
the right direction, then you’ll first need to create alignment within the
subsystems. In fact, rather than taking action in a misaligned environment, save
yourself the time, energy, and resources (not to mention the headaches,
heartburn, and sleepless nights) by first aligning the Execution Diamond and then
enacting change.
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