The Imperative of Tempo

In a world of rapid change, the only sustainable advantage is the ability to learn, adapt, and execute faster than your competition. — John Boyd

Data analytics is a core business function, especially as we add more automation to our processes. Leveraging data insights is crucial for situational awareness, customer engagement, autonomous operations and early identification of market trends. However, merely accumulating data is insufficient; the essence of competitive advantage now lies in the speed of actionable insight—what military strategist John Boyd referred to as "tempo."

Most enterprises are ensnared in a web of legacy organizational structures, cumbersome decision-making processes, outdated business models, and cultures resistant to change. These elements collectively inhibit agility, rendering companies ill-equipped to capitalize on fleeting market opportunities, act on new data, or respond effectively to unforeseen challenges. In the accelerating vortex of digital disruption and ever-evolving consumer behavior, these companies are at a competitive disadvantage, susceptible to losing market share to more agile competitors.

Organizations need to re-engineer their internal ecosystems to minimize resistance and incentivize a rapid tempo of change. This involves rethinking governance structures, streamlining decision-making processes, and fostering a culture that rewards agility and innovation. The focus should be on eliminating silos and barriers that slow down information flow and decision-making. In this way, organizations can transition from merely 'reacting' to 'anticipating and leading' market shifts.

John Boyd's military strategies offer an illuminating parallel for businesses. Boyd discovered that some fighter planes, despite showing inferior performance metrics on paper, actually outperformed their 'superior' counterparts in real-world scenarios. The secret was their ability to change direction more quickly—a faster tempo. The lesson here is simple yet profound: the metrics that were traditionally considered indicators of capability were not as critical as the ability to adapt swiftly.

Executive Takeaways

1. Strategic Adaptability: The new frontier of competitive advantage lies not just in what you know, but how quickly you can act on that knowledge.

2. Organizational Fluidity: Instituting a culture of agility and breaking down internal barriers are essential for operating at a faster tempo.

3. Leadership Imperative: Executives must spearhead the transformation, advocating for and institutionalizing fast decision-making and rapid execution.

4. Measuring Success: Traditional performance indicators need to be supplemented with new metrics that reflect an organization's adaptability and speed of execution.

In today's volatile business landscape, companies cannot afford to be merely 'good.' They must embrace the concept of tempo and adaptability as their new metrics for success. The speed at which you adapt is the speed at which you succeed.

*I use generative AI to assist in all my work.

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Kevin Benedict

Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Speed Changes Everything

As a futurist, I often find myself discussing how emerging technologies might impact jobs.  We talk about automation, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technologies that are all obvious candidates for human displacement.  We don't, however, think enough about the physics-related notion of speed. 

Speed refers to how much distance can be covered in a unit of time. If a car moves at 3 MPH, the driver can safely look around, take a drink of water, and eat a burger while driving.  However, if the car is moving at 120 MPH, the task of driving requires all of the driver's attention just to keep it under control.  The difference in speed completely changes the nature of the job.

The following is a list of just a few ways people, things, concepts and processes can be changed when speed increases:

1. Faster operational tempos require faster decision-making.  At a certain point humans reach their limit.  At that point processes must be automated and decisions made by algorithms to progress.
2. Speed changes organizational charts. Faster operational tempos require flatter organizational charts and fewer humans in the decision chain.
3. Speed requires faster acting and reacting.  Again, humans have their limits.  At a certain point automation and algorithms must take over to manage the speed of action.
4. Speed mandates continuous  and increased levels of attention and concentration.  Humans tend to quickly lose concentration, which soon becomes a big liability.  Automation will need to take over in a 24x7x365 - always on world.
5. The faster the speed, the more precision is required.  Often this precision can be lost as humans get tired and lose focus.
6. Speed quickly destroys the quality of a human experience.  Even a race car driver must rest, recuperate and be restored before returning to the track.  Continuous speed forces humans out of operational processes.
7. The increasing speed of innovations, invention and transformation makes long-term planning obsolete.
8. The speed of innovation far outpaces government's' ability to study, regulate and monitor it in order to build guardrails and protect their citizens from potential dangers.
9. Speed changes how markets operate.  Instant and automated digital trading based on algorithms can cause huge market swings and unanticipated swarming events and bring instability to the global financial system.  There is no time left in this process for wise industry sages to deliberate and ponder.
10. Speed changes how commerce and e-commerce are conducted.  Consumers want instant information, transactions, confirmations, approvals, feedback, real-time rating, comments, chats YouTube explanations and instant personalization.  Real-time equals automation, as humans cannot operate at digital speeds.
11. Speed changes how sports betting is conducted.  As more information is produced about every competitor, team, event and environment at a faster pace than ever before - the nature of betting changes.  Sensors, digital twins, data analytics, algorithms and speed increasingly becomes a source of advantage for sophisticated gamblers.  The nature of the game has changed.
12. Speed changes how democratic elections must be managed and safeguarded.  Media-reporting on elections based on near-real-time data, projections and speculation across different regions, time zones and methods of voting can create confusion, concern and conflict that interferes rather than promotes democracy.  
13. Speed changes the manner in which styles and cultures evolve.  Influencers can publish media and can instantly change the direction of fashion, create swarming events, or destroy the reputation of other people or things.
14. Speed changes how languages evolve.  Historically, time and distant provided environments where languages evolved slowly in near isolation or with limited outside influence.  Today, with global media broadcasting, and routine travel around the world the trajectory and pace of language evolution is greatly impacted.
15. Speed changes how conversations take place.  From face-to-face often requiring travel, to letters requiring travel and delivery, then phones, to email, texting and then chat, as each of these means of communication changed, so also did the way we format information and present it.  It changes our writing style and habits.

16. 

    Sloths are the definition of anti-speed

    Speed changes relationships - think online dating.  From proximity being a key selection filter to now opening the doors instantly to the world's population, much of what was historically involved with developing a relationship has been impacted by data and speed.
17. Speed changes the nature of conflict, battles and warfare.  In the roman era, leaders estimated that armies could generally move at 20 miles a day.  So armies separated by 60 miles were thought to be 3 days a part.  Three days allowed time to anticipate, prepare for battle or negotiate for peace.  Today, with stealth aircraft, drones, missiles and hypersonic weapons attacks can occur with little to no warning.  There is no time for negotiation, contemplation and conversation.  The nature of conflict has changed as a result of speed.
    

Today, speed is tightly integrated with the notion of digital.  As things becomes digitally enabled, speed transforms it.  This transformation often pushes humans beyond their limits.  They become the friction in a world running at un-human speeds.  A place where only more sophisticated digitally enabled things (i.e., robots, AI, algorithms, automation) can work at this new and future operational tempo.

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Kevin Benedict

Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Operational Tempo, Faster than Real-Time, Enterprise Mobility and the Next Y2K Event

I often discuss the concept of operational tempo in my digital transformation and mobile strategies sessions.  I define operational tempo as the speed or pace of operations.  The advent of broadband Internet, mobile devices and mobile applications have dramatically changed our expectations for the operational tempo of businesses.  None of us are willing to wait 8 minutes for a response on a product availability query from our smartphone.  None of us want our turn-by-turn navigation app on our iPhones to update only once every three minutes.  We seek real-time operational tempos, or perhaps even faster than real-time.

How can a mobile application be even faster than real-time?  It can know what you need before you even ask!  Mobile apps that are context aware can predict what you will need without you even asking for it. Let's imagine a service technician driving to his/her next job site.  The apps (and connected back-office systems) review traffic flows, guides the service technician to the optimal route, checks the client records for all relevant SLAs, warranties, financial issues, equipment location and past maintenance and repair records and service notes and provides them without being asked.  As the service technician nears the customer site, a text is automatically sent to the customer announcing his/her's imminent arrival.  In addition, the mobile application has checked the service vehicle's inventory of parts and creates a list of available on-board parts that are likely needed for the job.

The scenario we have just considered is real and can be done today with software from companies like SAP (SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization by ClickSoftware solution).  This system includes an artificial intelligence agent known as ClickButler that is tuned into the needs of mobile workers.

In order for artificial and context aware systems to provide their promised value, they must be connected to real-time data.  In addition, this data must be analyzed by a system fast-enough to support the operation tempo required by the users.  It is this challenge that Forrester's John McCarthy states will cause another Y2K event in many enterprises.  In other words, it will force companies to replace systems that are incapable of supporting real-time processes that are required to support mobile users.

In 2014, all companies should be reviewing their back-office systems to identify and replace the systems that simply cannot function in a "real-time" environment where the operational tempo requires instant everything.

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

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Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Strategies, Cloud Computing and the Role of Speed and Agility

If I can develop and pursue my plan to defeat you faster than you can execute your plan to defeat me, then your plan is unimportant. ~ The Art of Maneuver by Robert Leonhard

In our world of near ubiquitous connectivity, the competitive arena in many industries has moved from the physical to the digital, and from the tempo-of-old to the tempo-of-the-new.  The word tempo means the rate or pace of activity (aka, business operations).  Any IT decision made today should consider how different options and choices will impact today's and the future's tempo of operations.  Can and will the solution you choose support tomorrow's required tempo of business?

In many countries in Latin America new and emerging e-invoicing requirements have been passed by national tax authorities.  In some countries today, the seller of a product needs to electronically record a sale/invoice (in real-time) with the tax authority before a product can be delivered.  The tax authority issues a real-time unique transaction code to be attached to the invoice number.  Once the product is delivered, the buyer electronically acknowledges receipt (in real-time) with the national tax authority, and the process is closed and documented with the tax authority.  If a product is found to be sold and delivered outside of this real-time electronic reporting system, stiff penalties will be applied.

These e-invoicing systems are designed to document and make visible transactions in real-time for tax collection purposes.  This process requires an entirely new and faster tempo than most companies are currently prepared to support.  This is but one example of how the tempo of business is being impacted by digital transformations.

Today, companies are looking seriously at cloud computing solutions and SaaS (software-as-a-service) options in increasing numbers for the purpose of improving the operational tempo of their IT environment.    If you instigate a global five-year ERP implementation plan today, your business will likely be unrecognizable by the time the implementation is completed.  This means your ERP implementation will likely be misaligned with the new and different demands of your market and industry.

Every aspect of your IT environment must be evaluated today in the context of tempo.  What tempo will each solution and integration methodology support?  Will my enterprise mobile strategy support the tempo of change and evolution of the devices, networks and apps my target customers want?  Can I keep pace with the demands of my market?

It is critical that enterprises today evaluate themselves in a brutally honest manner and identify weaknesses that drag down operational tempo.  These limitations will have an increasingly negative impact on bottom lines as the operation tempo of your market and competition increases.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.