Key Reasons to Go Slow to Go Fast

to Evolve Your Business Strategy

Damian D. Skipper Pitts, PhD

Author, Go Slow to Go Fast: Planning to Execution

 Key Reasons to Go Slow to Go Fast to Evolve
Your Business Strategy
Over the last five years, my work with organizations and business leaders in
the executive education and consulting space has proven time after time that
one of two things are sure to happen: you'll either disrupt by becoming a Big-
bang disruptor or you'll get disrupted by Big-bang disruption. Anyone being
honest about the paths they've traveled and the decisions they've made since
2010 will tell you that Big-bang disruption is here and it's here to stay for the
foreseeable future.

What most people today will tell you after gaining insight from their lessons
learned over the last five years is there are key reasons to go slow to go fast to
improve upon and perfect on their organization's business strategy. In fact,
there are 10 reasons that can actually help leaders improve their strategies
and outcomes across their organizations. These reasons will translate why
incumbent thinking that leads to incumbent behaviors and outcomes where
little to no change occurs continue to happen even with most leaders already
knowing most of their truths.

Going slow to go fast is all about making better decisions to cause fast,
deliberate change to impact an organization's leverage points. People are the
real drivers of changeorganizational changeand their actions after making
better decisions, in most cases leads to mastering The Art of the Pivot: knowing when and how to do the right things
to get the right things done. This speaks volumes about their internal capabilities to justifiably a needed pivot to
remain relevant in the marketplace.

The following ten reasons will not only keep the ship out at sea while in rough waters without sinking, they will also
ensure adequate resources remain plentiful before the ship reaches its new port to refuel and rest before setting out
to navigate the next long journey.

1. It's about leading the right people, in the right direction, for the right mission for the organization.
Identifying the right people, leading them towards your vision and making sure they drive the organization towards a better
future with impact requires a directional and strategy mapping feature. This feature, the Leadership GPS System, allows
you to seize mission-oriented, presence-heightening opportunities that ensures purpose, meaning and ultimately
differentiation. The Leadership GPS System establishes the simple questions to study and solve challenges and problems
along the way. It brings clarity to the "what-if" scenarios to ensure you are able to provide the best answers possible on
behalf of the entire system. Keeping the step-wise path of operational success at the forefront, this mapping feature
provides the "Why, Who, What, Where and When" to lead decision-makers into making the best choices when leading the
organization forward. It provides the tools to master The Art of the Pivot for the organization to make the right pivots at the
right time to remain relevant in the marketplace. And under all circumstances, it ensures that the organization remains
poised and disciplined to do the right things to get the right things done.

We've all been told that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Well, the Leadership GPS System
ensures a straight line between planning and execution is provided as the compass to achieve mission effectiveness. Want a
tool to quickly help you validate assumptions in the organization's strategy? Give your people a Leadership GPS System that
answers the Five W's Agenda; you'll wished you had made the choice to do so sooner. When this process of measuring and
learning is done correctly, it will be clear that a process is either moving the drivers of the business model or not. If not, it
is a sign that it is time to pivot or make a structural course correction to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the
brand, product, strategy and engine of growth.

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 Essentially, the Leadership GPS System describes the directional and strategy mapping feature that both supports a
successful implementation plan with defined strategies and provides an effective series of metrics to alleviate growing
concerns when driving performance-driven execution in the face of marketplace VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity
and Ambiguity.

2. It's about making sure the need for continuous improvement is acknowledged.
Continuous improvement is only possible by first acknowledging your current circumstances, the gaps between planning
and execution, and having a full understanding about what the future can become. These three perspectives can be viewed
with clarity simply by taking your team on a casual walka Gemba Walk to be exact. This tool helps to build simplicity into
your enterprise by following 3 continuous perspectives: Continuous Delivery (Build minimum viable products and
deployment pipelines), Continuous Analytics (Measure delivery analysis using real-time monitoring and instrumentation),
and Continuous Feedback (Learn from the data using low risk experiments, surveys and interview techniques). It was once
said, "leaders practice repetitively until they can't get things wrong" and this is why acknowledging and doing continuous
improvement at every turn is critical.

3. It's about realizing the importance for continuous integration to drive differentiation.
Continuous improvement is nothing without continuous integration to drive differentiation. Here we are in the 15th year of
the 21st Century and talk still remains around organizations "achieving a competitive advantage." Really? If you are one of
those people who continues to use this language, you haven't fully grasped the concept of what is actually happening in
today's marketplace. We are in the age of Big-bang disruption where 'execution excellence' is pivotal for organizations to
realize differentiationand by no means does this translate into achieving a competitive advantage. Here's a question to
consider? Why put in the hard work of achieving an advantage over your competitors, but still compete? That is exactly what
a competitive advantage is at the end of the day. Achieving a competitive advantage means that you are still chasing after
the trends that are being set in the industry versus setting the trends others must chase; hence you achieving a different
advantage known as a strategic advantage. It's the difference between being disrupted by Big-bang disruption or disrupting
as a Big-bang Disruptor (refer to #6).

4. It's about learning the concept of Leadership Triplicity: Lean Leadership, Crisis Leadership and Performance-Driven
Execution.
Leadership Triplicity is defined as "three things that must happen, in parallel, for people to understand, learn and do
something to impact the Future Picture." The word something is key here. Think about the United States Marine Corps for
example. As the smallest branch of service in the entire U.S. military, the Marine Corps is the only branch that operates on
land, on the seas and in the air. It is, arguably, one of the best organizations on the planet and is respected by all and
feared by some. The something that makes the U.S. Marine Corps so powerful is that the brand does leadership, strategy
and execution at the highest levels of performance in all three areasoperations on land, on the seas and in the air
without fail at all times. What three things are you and your brand doing to resemble execution excellence? What is your
something that differentiates you as a leader or brand to be both respected and feared at the same time?

Try this on for size: Lean Leadership prepares you to think and do execution excellence without having deficient functions.
Crisis Leadership is preemptive that allows you to lead out from crises before they happen while going beyond incumbent
thinking. And Performance-Driven Execution allows you to go beyond best practices using Next-Level Practice Decisions
(NLPDs) to impact the Future Picture using Next-Level Practices (NLPs). This is Leadership Triplicity at work.

5. It's about making better decisions today to impact tomorrow's outcomes.

The key reasons to go slow to go fast to improve upon and perfect on the organization's business strategy is to make
tomorrow's reality better than today's experience. This can only be achieved with the drivers of performance, systems and
organizational behaviorspeopleto improve organizational efficacy. The people model in the Go Slow to Go Fast concept
is known as "P4 Engagement & Application" that clearly states the four people types across the organization, their
motivators and the outcomes from their behaviors given the four categories. The key is to understand fully where the
categories are in the organization and how to improve on them to make better decisions today that will ultimately impact
tomorrow's outcomes. In the end, it comes down to how people engage and apply the behaviors within the organization's
strategy to define the levels of efficacy from within the core of the systemculture.

6. It's about avoiding Big-bang disruption by becoming a Big-bang Disruptor.

Big-bang disruption basically means that virtually overnight, entire lines of business is wiped out because customers flock,
all at once, to another actor who possess greater value. It's the difference between the "bell curve" and the "shark fin" to
essentially describe the pace of change or disruption in the marketplace. It would be wise to become a Big-bang Disruptor
as a leader and decision-maker in your own right. A Big-bang Disruptor is one of those people who introduce, from out of
nowhere, new disciplines, processes, products and services in ways that cause heartache to others who just don't see them
coming. They don't look like traditional competitors and they dont behave as incumbents. Instead, they are the disruptors
who look at past and present behavior to think about what hasn't been considered yet. They use low-cost experiments with

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 existing technologies to see what new products they can dream up and when they hit, their innovations don't adhere to
conventional strategic paths or normal patterns of market adoption. That makes them incredibly hard to combat. They
understand that one of two things are sure to happen; you either disrupt or you're going to be disrupted! This is a trait that
leaders and managers alike must learn, as with all people in business, if they want to remain relevant! This is what is known
as becoming a Grey Rhino (explained in the Go Slow to Go Fast strategy). If you are not a Grey Rhino or close to becoming
one, you better get moving. Grey Rhinos have one objectivedisruption.

7. It's about using a step-wise path that leads to fast, deliberate "Next-Gen" change.
Becoming a Big-bang Disruptorthe Grey Rhinorequires the adaptation of the following six elements:

Strategy: the plan devised to maintain and build a strategic advantage over the competition.
Structure: the organizational design to ensure the best-fit approach to talent is achieved.
Systems: the organizational behaviors in the hands of the right decision-makers.
Shared Consciousness & Purpose: the organization's core values that are evidenced throughout the culture to bridge
the gaps between planning and execution.
Staff & Style: the overarching influencers used to direct the organization's vision towards the Future Picture: Lean
Leadership adopted, Crisis Leadership entrusted, The Art of the Pivot replicated, and Performance-Driven Execution
achievedto develop Big-bang Disruptors.
Skills (Competencies and Proficiencies): the Five Sciences in the organization that drives the performance: Behaviors,
Motivators (values), Acumen, Competencies and Emotional Intelligence (EI)increases physical and sensory
enhancements for people to Better their Best when dealing with others at all times.

Without the these elements present, organizations will have a difficult time replicating a disciplined training system and
platform. Organizations will be faced with a higher probability of failure at not making the right pivot at the right time to
meet their objectives. They require what is known as a key organizational behavior known as Leadership Code Switching.
This approach provides the ability to modify behavior in response to rapidly changing environments using past experiences
to manage psychological (limiting) challenges when moving toward the Future Picture. It delivers faster bottom line effort
with transforming qualities to develop less effort and greater impact on the constraining leverage points across the
organization, including its entire ecosystem.

These organizational influencers are known as the Centers of Gravity (CoGs): those critical leverage points to transform
Leadership (decision-makers), Processes (strategies and tactics), Infrastructure (organizations and emerging markets),
Populations (people) and Action Units (customers and vendors) that leads to fast, deliberate "Next-Gen" change. Are you
impacting your leverage points? Before now, did you consider these and what are you doing to use them to create your
strategic advantage in becoming a Big-bang Disruptor?

8. It's about bridging the gaps between planning and execution.

Leaders talk about planning and execution, but how often do you hear them say that they're actually working to bridge the
gaps between the two? Are you thinking about or currently working to bridge the gaps between your own planning and
execution strategies? In most cases, gaps exist because organizational cultures have one leg in the incumbent world of
doing the things that are aligned with the norms and the other leg in the transformed world where process transformation,
Leadership Triplicity and evolved reinventions reside.

The Go Slow to Go Fast approach represents a new management system around evolved process for a rapidly changing
world whereby decision-makers who choose to bridge theses gaps are daring and willing to remove the leg from the
incumbent world to place both legs in the transformed world. To do this, they must be prepared to introduce a radically
different system to change how an organization thinks, behaves and makes decisions around a new design of distributed
power. This will ultimately change how consumers and vendors behave around their products and services.

This would mean that the organization must be disciplined to behave by clearly defined roles using the six elements (refer
to #7) as key reference points to allow for greater clarity about where authority resides and who is accountable for what in a
system that promotes Shared Consciousness and Purpose: achieving shared levels of responsibilities, transparency and
inclusiveness where the organization shares informed perspectives.

This means that everyone is provided the same information, not to draw the same conclusions, but that everyone has all of the pieces of
information and combined wisdom to create the puzzle that solves the issues facing the organization and team while acknowledging the
importance and opportunity of no longer having to be dependent upon one single person or a few people to direct the organization forward. A
mouthful right? But in essence, this is the best way to construct a healthy organizational culture that keeps its eyes on the ball, at all times, for
closing or eliminating the gaps between planning and execution to achieve execution excellence.

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 Basically, to successfully bridge the gaps, a uniquely defined decision-making process must pervade the entire
organizational design and ecosystem to uniquely integrate perspectives geared toward action that eliminates over-analysis
(that ultimately stalls direct actions) for actually get the right things done. This is a system where decisions are distributed
so each team memberwithin the guidelines established by the organization's Leadership GPS Systemare able to direct
others on what they can and cannot do to solve issues themselves to realize better outcomes. It harnesses the conscious
power and capacity of the people within the system to sense dissonance between what is existing circumstance (existing
reality) and what the future can become (the "why" and purpose) to avoid tension (internal/external) throughout the leverage
points and Centers of Gravity (refer to #7).

When this is achieved, the new management system has five different organizational development mechanismsThe Five
P's of Crisis Leadershipto process unexpected turbulence into direct and actionable behaviors to reach better outcomes:
Leadership Purpose, Leadership Perspective, Leadership Progression/Execution, Leadership Perseverance & Persuasion.
The five mechanisms will help leaders with immersing themselves in the new cultural and organizational transformational
experience that is rooted in Leadership 2.0 and organizational behavior "Next-Gen" practices to affect the people, teams, the
organization and its whole environment.

Let's see how:

1) The People [Knowledge Management]: Leadership Purpose

Bridging the gaps with "Leadership Purpose" helps decision-makers learn how to close the leadership distance by
building relational synergy that increases self-knowledge to the management of themselves and the leadership of
others.

2) The Team [Resource Management]: Leadership Perspective

Bridging the gaps with "Leadership Perspective" facilitates empirically-based learning with sensible and practical
decision-making skills to achieve objectives using collaboration (who you are is who you attract), collective
intelligence (collective efforts of many individuals for consensus decision-making to achieve a strategic advantage) and
connectedness (the ability to touch a heart before asking for a hand) across your teams to Better their Best.

3) The Organization [Change Management]: Leadership Progression/Execution

Bridging the gaps with "Leadership Progression/Execution" transforms organizations by helping its associates
understanding the high capacity and crucial role that Leadership Code Switching plays in achieving improved
organizational performance and behavior, and how best to use that role to achieve improved results.

4) The Environment [Process Management]: Leadership Perseverance & Persuasion

Bridging the gaps with "Leadership Perseverance & Persuasion" explores the roles leaders have in their environments at
large, and in turn, how organizations are affected by their Centers of Gravity: Leadership (decision makers), Processes
(strategies and tactics), Infrastructure (the organization and emerging markets), Populations (people) and Action Units
(customers and vendors).

9. It's about knowing when to open the right box for innovation.
In recent years, much research has been conducted around leadership innovation and execution. And in most cases, the
research continues to reveal wide gaps between the aspirations of leaders to innovate and their ability to execute. As it
turns out, there are several reasons for a lack of innovation and execution and it comes down to people not being willing to
open themselves up to doing things that are different from the norms. Innovation is delivered to those individuals who set
their stage for performance enhancements to open a world of "what-ifs" in order to boost value.

Innovation is a big idea with a big potential. Executing on it using flawless strategies achieves extraordinary outcomes from
that big potential. However, it would be wise to approach it in small steps, implementing just one or a few of the ideas we
propose and building from there. For many organizations, the initial steps on this value-creating journey are the most
critical of all, and taking that step avoids the potential to have to scramble for other ways to improve, largely via cost
cutting, growth initiatives, risk-weighted-asset reductions, and portfolio rebalancing.

Here's one simple thing you can do to make the first step one to remember that carries much value; position yourself to be
able to open one of your innovation boxesone white, the next red, and the last blue. The white box is the most important
because it starts the processprocess transformationthat allows you to re-imagine how the future can become and then
provides the future-focused instructions, tools, resources and step-wise path to achieve "what-if" outcomes. A few examples
you'll learn from the white box explains:

Know exactly what you want, how to position the right people for the task, and ensure everyone is determined to get it
no matter what the circumstances.

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 How to exchange goals (opportunities for excuses) for targets (achieve your objectives on time and on mission) and
experience better outcomes to Better your Best.
The importance of taking weekly walks (metaphor) to identify opportunities for improvement, make the improvements,
and eliminate risk for the next set of objectiveslarge efforts must produce even larger outcomes.
It's better to penetrate emerging markets and dominate them fast with deliberate action, creating momentum and
leverage that sets new trends versus following the trends others set in the competitive marketplace.

Although the white box is the start of a new journey for the majority that decide to open it, it does not matter what the
experience level or position of the individual once they have a white box. Everyone can glean insight from the white box of
innovationpersonally and professionally. Simply focusing on the white box and learning to apply the future-focused
instructions, tools, resources and step-wise path to achieve "what-if" outcomes will allow you to look around one day in the
near future and be pleased with the outcomes. The white box will help you arrive at a great place in the not so distant
future.

The red box can only be received after completing every task in the white box. The red box explains how to open your mind
to further explore the future-focused instructions, tools, resources and step-wise path to achieve "what-if" outcomes in the
white box, to go on to discover what awaits after applying the strategiesimplementation and execution. There's a simple
lesson from the red box for all who opens the top lid: "life will deliver your desires once you put your mind to what you want
from those desires. So, you might think about how big you want those desires to be before moving. Think big, get big. Think
small, get small.

The red box of innovation provides exceptional service to yourself, those you are responsible to lead, the teams you are on,
and the organization (brand) you represent. Even if you're not a fan of the 1966 original Star Trek series, the red box allows
you "to explore strange new worlds (creative thoughts of the mind), to seek out new life and new civilizations (emerging
ideas realized with others), to boldly go where no man has gone before (emerging markets)."

Finally, the blue box. Like the graduation from the white box to the red box, there's only one way to get to the blue box and
that would be to complete every task in the red box. The only thing that can be shared about the blue box of innovation is
that it will focus you and the brand on a particular product or service category using Performance-Driven Execution. It
explains that the more categories you serve, the less likely you're known for one. When dealing within the spheres of
innovation, when in troubled waters, people would most likely match their needs to those who are known as the specialist,
rather those who are generalist. The blue box explains that if you must expand, and everyone will need to at one time or
another, expand in the specialist sphere, not the generalist sphere.

Knowing when to open the right box for innovation identifies the most opportune times for your business to be a reflection
of its peoplethe drivers of innovation, decision-makers and extraordinary leaders. The key is to provide as many boxes as
possible to the people that make up the organization's culture.

Set a portion of your innovative process aside for yourself and invest it so that it will work for the entire team to produce
abundant outcomes to be reinvested in the markets you serve. The boxes of innovation creates a system, your business as a
system, that includes various roles that have different processes. Every function within the leverage points and Centers of
Gravity (CoGs) have designated processes for each role to allow your organization and entire ecosystem to run and produce
consistently placed innovative results. Creating systems will allow you to get the "why" right (purpose) and once you get the
why right, the other four; "who," "what," "when," and "where" often takes care of themselves by the A Players. Sound familiar?
It should because I'm referring to your Leadership GPS System.
And finally, knowing when to open the right box for innovation within the system for the organization, creates a corporate-
wide process transformation and change system that will reinforce commitments and energy on building the right
capabilities for specific tasks to yield impressive results. Top teams can help build a more innovative culture simply by
knowing when to open the right box for innovation in several ways:

Embrace innovation as a team obligation. It's not enough for the CEO to make innovation a personal objective and to
attend meetings on innovation regularly. Team associates must also agree that promoting innovation is a core part of
the organization's strategy. It will allow all stakeholders to reflect on the way their own behavior reinforces or inhibits it
and decide how they should role-model the change to engage others in the management process.

Transform managers into innovation leaders. Identifying selective managers or process who already act innovatively, to
some degree, provides opportunities to improve coaching and facilitation opportunities across every level of the
organization. Continuous improvement and integration of new skills that can build the capabilities of other people
involved in innovation efforts is critical for organizations to remain relevant and more effective. The target objective is
to make your collaborative networks even more productive.

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 Create opportunities for managed experimentation and quick success. Not surprisingly, this approach is typically the
best way to start any change effort across organizations today. Quick success using minimum viable products (MVPs)
matters even more with innovation: people need to see results and to participate in the change to be a part of the
transforming features. To get going quickly and learn along the way, select an innovation theme or topic area and then
create small campaign teams to drive success with the end result being focused on achieving execution excellence.
While you try out topics and ideas, use low-risk experiments that will take new products and services to market fast.
The key objective is not to get it right the first time, but to move quickly to give as many influential people as possible a
positive experience of innovation, even if a project doesnt generate profits immediately; hence the need for continuous
improvement and continuous integration. Getting everyone in the process to think strategically, focus sharply and move
quickly develops a positive experience to make all the difference in building the organization's capabilities and
confidence.

10. It's definitely about creating uncontested market strategy using The Art of the Pivot.
We've all heard the litany of excuses from leaders about their absence from "Next-Gen" decision-making to move their
organizationand peopleaway from the norms, to greatly impact their marketplace and the emerging markets they would
like to enter. Things like:

"Change takes a lot of time."

"I just don't have the right people for the task."

"I don't have the resources to bring in the consultants to help with our needed transformation."

"I want to transform, but just can't figure out how."

"No matter what I do, we just fall right back into our norms, over and over again."

"There's no clear ROI for the amount of time it will actually take to change now."

"You say that we need to 'take time to make time to take the time,' but how and when do you expect me to do that?"
"I don't even understand this thing you call 'Big-bang Disruption' or the whole 'shark fin' strategy. Introducing it to our team
and company might make me look foolish."

These statements may sound familiar to some, either because they have uttered some themselves or have heard others in
their organization saying some of the same. The truth of the matter is smart people still get disrupted today, but next-
level decision-makers disrupt! It's really that simple. There's nothing else to consider other than a few basic questions: "do
you continue to follow the trends set by others, or do you set and become the trends others will follow?" Creating
uncontested market strategy using The Art of the Pivot means making the right decisions at the right time to make the right
moves to remain relevant. Ok I get it, to some, change can be scary, but it's often necessary especially as markets can be
quick-moving and volatile.

Take for instance some of the past fatal mistakes made by the once powerful U.S. companies that's now included on a long
list of failed (in some cases bankrupt) ventures such as:

Blockbuster's failure to buy Netflix.

Blackberry, Palm OS and HTC's failure to move in the Smartphone space.
Kodak's miss against rivals Fujifilm, Nikon, Sony, Canon and others who kept innovating over the years with features
like face detection, smile detection, and in-camera red-eye fixes.
Borders failure to recognize and move on the entrance of Amazon.
Nokia's ability to see the future (what Apple and Google are today), but failure to build it.
Lucent Technologies, the one-time powerful firm that drove the profitable sole-source AT&T R&D subsidiary, allowance for
meritocracy to become mediocrity.
Motorola's failure to pivot its software to give people what they wanted. The sale to Google allowed for Motorola to
become HTC.
Xerox's fumbling of CEO likeability and leadership succession resulted in investor flightbefore Apple and IBM, there
was Xerox.
Filene's Basement, the one-time discount retail giant, failed at making updates and were completely rooted in the past.
That fact, combined with luxury retailers like Saks, Nordstrom and the emergence of high-end discount stores, and the
rise of flash sale sites like Gilt Groupe, ultimately caused Filene's Basement to shut their discount doors, forever.

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 Here's a key consideration with The Art of the Pivot. It's critical for leaders, organizations and brands to embrace and pivot
with new technologies emerging within their industry, especially when it has the potential to disrupt the current business
model. Technology waits for no one and definitely no brand, and ignoring those that threaten your business or organization
is a surefire way to lose out to sometimes smaller and most of the time hungrier competitorsBig-bang Disruptorswho
are itching for an opportunity to shine.

The Art of the Pivot creates uncontested market strategy when used correctly and timely. The opposite effect? Well, you
could easily find yourself adding to this very unfortunate list of once powerful actors in business and industry.

The Art of the Pivot is also crucial in the corporate training sphere. Organizations are failing to realize that corporate
training is broken mainly due to the fact that executives feel it is not keeping up with reality to produce the results to
impact business results. Three quarters of the nearly 1,500 senior managers at 50 organizations interviewed by the
Corporate Leadership Conference (2011 survey) were dissatisfied with their companies' Learning & Development function.
Only one in four reported that L&D was critical to achieving business outcomes. With this information, The Art of the Pivot
plays a key role in keeping organizations relevant.

The Takeaways

By not adopting these ten reasons to go slow to go fast with your business strategy, leaders and their organizations will
continue to use incumbent thinking and behaving that will lead to them down a road of demise and ultimate destruction. Falling
behind today is actually getting to be an easy thing to do with the current barrage and pace of change in the marketplace in all
respects. And in a time where Big-bang disruption is so prevalent, it's only a matter of time before your efforts are disrupted
causing the whole organization to resemble laggard activities in a very competitive environment and world. Going slow to go fast
allows for leaders to make better choices and decisions about the future, but there are four critical factors to consider to remain
ahead of the curve, and they begin on the inside by asking four essential questions:

1. What factors can you eliminate that seem to be outdated?

2. What factors can you improve upon to raise above the norms?
3. What factors can you reduce deficiencies below the norms?
4. What factors can you create that have yet to be considered?

When making better choices and decisionsGo Slow to Go Fastthere are two key factors to consider that leads to the creation
of gaps in innovation. The first is knowledge. Many established organizations are not innovative because their leaders do not
know how to make innovation systematic. In working with a Philadelphia-based small business on applying right-time
organizational behaviors and team building, the CEO quickly realized that not only did he have the wrong talent to initiate the
changes, he also had deficiencies to make the innovations systematicknowledge was his greatest deficiency with talent not so
far behind. The second factor is that some of the management systems that made organizations successful in the industrial
economy are now major obstacles as they try to become more innovative in the 21st Century digital age and knowledge
economy.

Organizations must invest in their leaders to ensure they develop their own innovative thinking capabilities and have the
capability to develop their associates' and teams' innovative-thinking skills. Organizations also need to design their culture and
organizational behavior practices to make innovation possible. This is known as Thinking Above the Bar to attain Breakthrough
Achievable Results, or simply, unpacking Performance-Driven Executionknown as the "Bar Effect" in Go Slow to Go Fast. The
Bar Effect allows everyone to stop using terms such as "think-outside-the-box" to begin raising the levels of performance to
adapt to tomorrow's requirements today. Thinking Above the Bar to attain Breakthrough Achievable Results requires everyone to
think strategically, focus sharply and move quickly...at the same time, for the same reasons and objectives, and for the same
outcomes where everyone is held accountable for the results, no longer just the CEO and leadership teams.

As well, organizations require a well-developed, organization-wide, future-focused innovation plan and system to ensure a
focused approach to organizational innovationstrategy, implementation and execution achieves "execution excellence." An
organization-wide innovation plan and system such as Go Slow to Go Fast strategy using Leadership Triplicity: Lean
Leadership to prepare you to think and do execution excellence without having deficient functions. Crisis Leadership to inspire
preemptive actions to allow you to lead out from crises before they happen while going beyond incumbent thinking. And
Performance-Driven Execution to help you go beyond best practices using Next-Level Practice Decisions (NLPDs) to impact the
Future Picture using Next-Level Practices (NLPs)drives relevancy and successful outcomes. It will ensure that the designated
improvements enable teams to focus their innovative thinking activities and align their innovations with the organization's
overall requirements for disruptive innovation to avoid any instance of Big-bang disruption while becoming Big-bang Disruptors.

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When the reasons outlined to go slow to go fast becomes embedded, they'll be an invisible strategic advantage for the
organization, consistently creating new value for the entire enterprise. They're reflected in how individuals and teams think
innovatively as they redefine complex issues, generate new ideas, discover solutions and mitigate risks. The end result will be
that organizations will close their innovation gaps, become able to achieve sustainable value and engagement throughout its
Centers of Gravity, and remain relevant into the future.