Can you deal with velocity?

The future belongs to those who are fast – that’s the reality of velocity! Watch this clip with Jim Carroll on stage speaking to thousands on stage in Las Vegas….

I regularly advise some of the largest organizations on the world on strategies that can help them to innovate in a fast paced future.

And it’s clear that lots of people don’t understand the massive rate of change which is occurring within every industry, profession, business model and product / service models.

Here’s a neat trick — go dig out your old marketing textbook, and look at the chapter on product lifecycles.

Sit back and think about just how ridiculously old-fashioned such a concept is.

There are no product lifecycles — there is just ‘agility in time to market.’

Do you have that?

Maybe not. That’s why I’ve come to use the word “velocity” to put this into perspective. When thinking about innovation and the future, and your ability to stay ahead of the innovation curve when it comes to what you do, and how you do it, ask yourself these questions:

• do you know the rate of change — the velocity of change — that impacts you, your industry, your products?
• are you meeting the requirement for operational excellence that your customers, suppliers, business partners and everyone else expects of you?
• are you properly positioned for velocity, in terms of your agility to do things at the pace required?
• does your culture support high-velocty change, or are you almost keeling over from organizational sclerosis?
• do you have the feedback and innovation mechanisms in place to deal with high-velocity change, and can you learn from them?
• are you planning at the leading edge, or are you still reviewing what you were planning last week?
• are you evolving markets/products at the pace required, or are your customers marching on because you are stuck in a slow time-to-market rut?
• are you at the curve of expectations of customers needs — do they think you’ve got the right stuff when it comes to velocity?
• are you anticipating customer solutions before they know they need them?

I’ve been hearing quite a few clients raising these issues in some of my leadership sessions lately; clearly, velocity is the big word right now.