We often talk about speed when describing certain kinds of businesses. Some companies are bureaucratic, slow, dysfunctional… others are fast… fast to market, fast to ship you something.

Just like a car, though, there’s an alternative to raw speed. Call it maneuverability. You might still take a long time to get up to perfect cruising speed, but you can initiate a turn on a dime. I’d put Ford in this category. Obviously, it’s going to be a long time before a car company is fast. It can take a year or more to get a factory up and running… there are just too many resources to manage. But how fast can a leveraged person in the organization get a decision made? How much data needs to be collected, how much proof needs to be produced, how many meetings need to be held?

In my experience, the size of the company isn’t always the driving factor in this metric. It’s usually the guts of senior management that matters.

Abundance does come to us when we focus and “go short and deep.”

It also brings this posting at JJL back to mind for me: Thank you for triggering the review, for I do need to look at it again as part of the litter of my attention span! A Measure of Success: My Results of Going Short and Deep

I want less, yet more…

I want…
Fewer posts, more content
Fewer acquaintances, more friends
Fewer noisy interruptions, more valuable signals
Fewer shallow conversations, more going deep
Fewer meaningless minutes, more intense days
Fewer projects alone, more collaboration.

Here’s to an abundant less in 2010 and beyond for all of us.
.-= ´s last blog ..How to Brand Yourself =-.

1. As you’ve pointed out “getting lean” has become a given. It is also one of those concepts that can be looked at from both the half empty or half full viewpoint. For example, lay-offs and furloughs: Half empty. Process and system reinvention: Half full.

2. You said,

“in 2010 I am more interested in internal social media and using those tools to drive internal tribes, relieve the burden of cluttered inboxes by streamlining communications and providing a forum for greater communication and collaboration.”

Yes, yes, yes! One of the business opportunities I see is the smart comeback of the company intranet, for those conversations are so vitally important. Social media on the public web is fun, and I believe it does make a difference, yet within the workplace pressure cooker the real-time immediacy of mutually-supportive collaboration gets very, very exciting.