Communication and High-Speed Management

Book excerpt: High-speed management is used to competitive advantage by some of the most successful organizations in the world - General Electric; Toyota; ASEA, Brown, and Boveri; Motorola; Intel; and Matsushita. In these very successful companies fast cycle time or high-speed management translates into two important organizational capabilities. First, it creates a high level of performance that management can build into a firm's operating systems. More specifically, increases in effective communication are employed to eliminate bottlenecks, delays, and errors in production, cutting costs and improving quality. Second, high-speed management is an organizational strategy which continuously improves a firm's integration, coordination, and control systems. It transforms all of a firm's communication activities such as leadership, corporate climate, teamwork, worker and unit interfaces, process mapping, and outside linking processes into a more responsive customer adaptation system.