I work at a large company. My nature is to move quickly, which often feels impossible. In the past few weeks, a lot of the impossibility has involved not knowing the right people.
A lot of smart people think about this, for example the labcoats behind Organization Network Analysis. Looking at how people work together in a network can often yield surprising insights into whether the organization can move fast or slowly.
A lot of the rest of us do this everyday without thinking about it, with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and the rest, leveraging each other to speed ourselves up (I didn't list MySpace, since that slows people down).
But it comes down to one thing... the degree to which you can communicate effectively, quickly, and trustfully with the people you need to get things done. If you couldn't conceivably get agreement with someone over IM then you don't have the right relationship with them to decide things in business time. The last guy I hired I negotiated purely over SMS while I was on the tarmac, otherwise I would have lost him.
Fast Fast Fast Fast requires People People People People.
[...] people are key to decision velocity. And applications are largely devoid of people relationships. So [...]
ReplyDelete