Leading the High Velocity Organization: How to Outrace Rivals in Quality, Cost, and Time to Market (1 Day Class)

Seminar Instructor

Steven J. Spear DBA, MS, MS
Author of Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win

Background and Program Objective:

Across a broad variety of hyper competitive sectors, a few organizations simply outrun their competition. Though competing in the same markets for the same customers, offering similar products and services, reliant on the same suppliers, and subject to the same rules and regulations, they nevertheless generate more value (from the customers' perspective), in less time, with less effort, at less cost. The result is growing market share and higher margins.The resulting success pays dividends to all concerned: customers, suppliers, employees, and shareholders.  

The secret to the success of these leaders is that when they face the common challenges of identifying market needs, generating product and service designs to meet those needs, and generating those offerings, they attack all the attendant uncertainty that is involved with innovation that is so organically institutionalized in their organizations that no one can match its speed, endurance, or breadth.

Fortunately, applying institutionalized innovation across the board is not merely the realm of a few idiosyncratic inspired geniuses.  Rather, it depends on core capabilities that can be taught, cultivated, practiced, and applied effectively. Through presentations, case studies, exercises, and breakout sessions this program will: 

• Introduce the capabilities that characterize the highest velocity, most innovative organizations 
• Explore how they apply in your particular work
• Identify what leaders need to do to cultivate and engage the capabilities
• Develop an action plan for initial 'test of concept'

Course Outline:

Opening

• Business-case motivations for learning from world beating organizations.
  Objective: Explain motivation for looking to outsiders for lessons.
• Representative case study example: Company’s experience with process improvement
  Objective: Create opportunity to compare and find similarities and contrasts between company’s experience and that of other organizations.
  

Introduction
Objective: Introduce the capabilities underpinning the sustained competitive advantage of high velocity organizations.

Video case study: How complex systems fail
Objective: Identify the organizational proclivities that compromise success. Open discussion about how these failure modes can be addressed, rectified, and converted into sources of superiority.

Working Lunch with Small Group Discussion
Objective: Reflect on ways in which company’s processes are similarly vulnerable

Hands on simulation: Iterative process design
Objective: Practice process design/process improvement frameworks.

Case study discussion: Learning to lead at Toyota
Objective: Identify the critical skills and leadership roles in high velocity organizations.

Case study discussion: Pratt & Whitney engine design
Objective: See capabilities of high velocity organizations applied on large scale projects in product design.

Break out groups
Objective: Focused groups explore how lessons taken from high velocity organizations can be applied to critical company research, design, production, and administrative processes.

Next steps and wrap up
Objective: Identify where and how the company can conduct a small scale, low cost, fast feedback test of concept. 

Who should Attend:

The workshop is targeted for senior leaders with line responsibility who are eager to accelerate design, delivery, or administrative process for which they are responsible and for those 'subject matter experts' charged with advancing programs in quality, productivity, workplace safety, product reliability, and the like.  

Preparation:

Participants will be expected to prepare an evaluation of a business critical process: how it operates, where it struggles, and what has been done to better it.

*On-site Delivery:
This seminar can be delivered at your facility. Please contact Olga Flory at 617-871-2976 or email oflory@lean.org for details.

Our educational events are designed to cater to a limited number of participants. If you must cancel a registration, refunds can be issued until the set refund date (20 business days prior to the start of the workshop series). After that date, no refunds will be processed. If you cancel after that date, you will be given a credit for the full amount paid, good for one year (for either yourself or someone else in your organization). You are responsible for contacting LEI to facilitate receiving the credit. To cancel please call LEI at (617) 871-2900.