The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition

The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition by Steven Spear“The High-Velocity Edge” is an optimistic book that offers straightforward principles, and ample real-life examples that leaders employ to outperform the competition. Author Steven J. Spear with a doctorate from Harvard Business School, a master’s in engineering and in management from MIT, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton certainly has the expertise and experience to provide his wisdom on best business practices. This practical 432-page book includes the following twelve chapters: 1. Getting to the Front of the Pack, 2. Complexity: The Good News and the Bad News, 3. How Complex Systems Fail, 4. How Complex Systems Succeed, 5. High Velocity Under the Sea, In the Air, and on the Web, 6. Capability 1:System Design and Operation, 7. Capability 2:Problem Solving and Improvement, 8. Capability 3:Knowledge Sharing, 9. Capability 4:Developing High-Velocity Skills in Others, 10. High-Velocity Crisis Recovery, 11. Creating High-Velocity Health-Care Organizations, 12. Conclusion.Positives:1. An accessible and well-researched book. Excellent resource for professionals in the field.2. The interesting topic of how to beat the competition by following sound business practices.3. A well-organized book. The book follows the four capabilities of the high-velocity edge.4. A good use of charts and diagrams to complement the narrative.5. The book is driven by not only the four capabilities but by a variety of business applications. Examples after examples.6. The foundation of this business edge. “As different as these organizations are in many respects, they have one thing in common: They are adept at designing, developing, and operating exceptionally complex systems to achieve exemplary and constantly improving performance in the design, production, and delivery of complex goods or services.”7. Explains how complex systems fail and provides case studies “In short, low-velocity organizations, unlike the high-velocity leaders, are slow learners, slow improvers, slow innovators, and ultimately sluggish competitors.”8. Provides many philosophical principles to abide by. “The argument of The High-Velocity Edge is that the way complex work systems are managed has direct and predictable ramifications for performance.”9. Alcoa is highlighted as one of those complex-system companies that have succeeded. “If you had to depend on a single explanation for Alcoa’s success, it would be that Alcoa gave up depending on designing perfect processes and committed itself to discovering them instead.”10. Explains how to view problems. “All this resulted from deciding that problems were not a never-ending plague to be endured but a never-ending guide to improvement.”11. The very interesting case study of the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Power Propulsion Program.12. The story of how Toyota raced from behind to win. “In short, Toyota was discovering how to do ever more work, more quickly and more reliably, without using more labor or more machinery—and this process of discovery kept going decade after decade.”13. Provides plenty of business application involving problem-solving discipline. “Problem solving is done in a disciplined fashion. Assumptions about cause and effect are made explicit and are stated clearly, then they are tested in a rigorous fashion so improvement efforts both make processes better and deepen process knowledge.”14. Explains how lessons discovered through local problem solving and make them useful throughout the organization. “The object of jishuken is to move knowledge from those who have it to others who can put it to good use.”15. The importance of the scientific method. “This emphasized the importance of using the scientific method to (a) solve problems, (b) build deeper process knowledge, and (c) spread what was learned by showing the discovery process, not just the solution.”16. A case study of crisis recovery.17. Creating high-velocity health-care organizations. “At MGH’s Back Bay primary-care practice, the clinical staff members took Mrs. Grant’s experience to heart and committed themselves to a simple doctrine: no ambiguity in work design and no workarounds of problems when they are seen.”18. The importance of feedback. “And in general, work should be designed with a built-in test that immediately tells the worker when and where a problem occurs (part of Capability 1), so as to unleash the creative dynamic of problem solving (Capability 2) and knowledge sharing (Capability 3).”19. Formal bibliography included.20. Comprehensive notes with links included.Negatives:1. A bit verbose and repetitive beyond the necessary.2. The book’s 2nd edition was published in 2010 so perhaps an update is warranted.3. Some may consider this book nothing more than a rehash of other popular business philosophies such as: Total Quality Management (TQM) and Lean Six Sigma.4. I would have liked to have seen a table of the companies using these techniques besides the ones mentioned in the book.In summary, this high-velocity edge is a compelling book on how to beat the competition by following the four core capabilities of high-velocity edge. The book defines and provides plenty of examples of these core capabilities put into practice and their effects. A bit verbose and repetitive and in need of an update but overall the principles are timeless and practical. I recommend it!Further recommendations: “Toyota Kata” by Mike Rother, “The Toyota Way” by Jeffrey Liker, “Lean Six Sigma for Service” by Michael L. George, “Out of the Crisis” by W. Edwards Deming, “Turn the Ship Around” by L. David Marquet, “Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard” by Chip Heath, “The Southwest Airlines Way” by Jody Hoffer Gittell, “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande, “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek, and “The Process Improvement Book” by Tristan Boutros.

It's an excellent book for anyone interested in learning about the Toyota Production System and how it's so much more than the tools. This should be one of the first reads for any leader about to embark on a lean journey to help avoid some of the common pitfalls associated with most deployment efforts.My warning is that it's the EXACT same book as "Chasing the Rabbit." I enjoyed reading "Chasing the Rabbit" and was interested in reading more from Steven Spear . . . deja vu started kicking in, though, as I read the introduction, so I closed it and opened the Rabbit and found that it's word-for-word the same book. I don't understand why it has two titles and covers. Maybe I should have read the details more deeply and found that it was identical, but I didn't - and I really feel that I completely wasted $17. Overall, I love the book but am very dissatisfied!

This book applies to many things in life, just as in manufacturing. A must read. It can help any organization reach the next level.

This book was recommended to me by my ex professor of operations during my MBA. I bought this book a couple of weeks before taking a GM role in a manufacturing plant. It has been an incredible tool to use, i used it extensively in developing the improvement journey for my plant. I strongly recommend this book to any business leader who wants to build sustainable continuous improvement and practices within their business.

Lots of books have been written trying to sell the "secret sauce" involved in quality management. Many focus on a single, or a few, aspects of the Toyota system and try to sell that as the key to success. This book recognizes it as a system and the need to replicate the entire system.

It has been hard to find a book about leading in a lean environment that was actually worth is weight, but this really hit the spot. No gimmicks, no quick-fix tools that come and go, just simple, straightforward principles to live by. I really appreciate the grounded nature of the writing. The book is full of credible examples which make it easy to apply to any organization in any industry wanting to become higher performing.

Mr. Spear's book gives a leader the tools to help them continue to improve themselves and offer more suggestions for improving your life.

Enjoyed the book and getting to know the author- very insightful viewpoint

I have been studying ways to improve organisations for a long time and the ideas provided in High-Velocity Edge just tied up all the loose ends for me. This book should provide the missing piece of the puzzle for Lean practitioners who understand that the tools aren't what make Toyota great (and they also won't keep any organisation ahead of the pack). The ideas are stunningly simple and effective yet worlds away from how most organisations choose to operate.4 capabilities of high velocity organisations are presented, brought to life with stories and examples from a number of organisations. It is a deep dive into what the 4 capabilities mean and look like and how they add up to extraordinary results for the rare organisations that have embraced them. I found this book inspirational.

Required reading in the category of Lean and DevOps but note that this is the same book as Chasing the Rabbit. Buy one or the other.

Auch wieder,wie bei anderen, der weisse Film, wie Kreide im Gesicht.