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

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.

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

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.

Loved it! Took his class at MIT and his book is a excellent summation of the course. Highly recommended. Secondarily, he's just a really great guy, very down to earth, and willing to get his hands dirty. A great leader!

A very thoughtful book, with practical insights and well-described case examples to drive home major points of the author's thesis.

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

Having read the majority of this book and the conclusions, and some reviews, I thought the High Velocity Edge was well written and is a useful tool for management personnel to guide their organizations. Here is my detailed feedback to explain what I liked about it and explain what I would have liked to see in this book: Things I liked: 1: This book provides good examples of organizations that have had to reevaluate the way they execute work. As such I think this is a very good book for demonstrating that it is in fact possible to make higher volumes of product at a higher quality with little drawback or a low amount of investment from management. 2: I liked that Steven J. Spear layed out his four capabilites at the beginning in a very organized manner and how they were each discussed in detail Chapters 6-9. Here are some things I would have liked to see: 1: Having also read books by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Lillian Gilbreth (e.g. Principles of Scientific Management [which the author references], the Psychology of Management, Eliminating Waste in Teaching), his criticism of scientific management from the early 20th century is sound, however I would have liked a critique in more detail to explain exactly where Taylorism went wrong. For example, fast food restaurants such as McDonalds designed their work system using a scientific management approach so that their workers can perform work efficiently. This means that McDonalds can hire less skilled workers to support their business, which results in McDonalds being able to support their goal of providing fast service at low cost compared to a regular bar and grill. While you could argue that comparing McDonalds and Toyota is completely wrong, Steven J. Spear makes the argument that the principles that he discovered apply to making cars, making submarines, producing aluminum and even healthcare. So couldn't they also work for flipping burgers or some other low skill work or mundane tasks? 2: I would have liked to see either in an epilogue or a foreword examples where Steven J. Spear went into detail on his experiences following authorship of this book. To be a little more specific, here are the questions I would have liked answered: 1. Are these results repeatable, and if so, who in industry has been able to successfully implement these 4 capabilities using the High Velocity Edge alone?; and 2: For those who were unsuccessful, why are they unsuccessful? I realize that every case is going to have a different approach, however it sounds like (having just finished this book) what's being sold by this book is that just having the skill or ability to develop the 4 capabilities in the HVE is good enough to benefit any organization outright. I mean the book has been out for over ten years in a couple of different editions, I would like to see a case study where the results noted by Alcoa in the editorial reviews are repeated by other people, or even just an endorsement from Toyota. On another note, some of the more negative reviews are funny and note that this is the same book as "Chasing the Rabbit" which is actually edition 1 of the HVE. Anyways thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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.

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.

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

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.