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I just received this email from my colleague Steve Spear whom I am working on several articles with at the moment.  Congrats Steve!  You deserve this award for some of the most profound work I can remember!

“Dear Friends and Colleagues,

 

I’m delighted that my book, Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and What Great Companies Can Do to Catch Up and Win, has received welcome accolades in the last few days.  The book was awarded a Shingo Prize for Research Excellence, and it received a flattering appraisal in Harvard Business Review’s April issue.

 

The reviewer, Anand J. Raman, writes:

 

            Spear…has dazzled readers with his insights into what makes 

            Toyota tick and his understanding of how any organization can 

            use those ideas to improve its effectiveness. Not surprisingly, his 

            first tome was highly anticipated, and it’s probably an understatement 

            to say that it won’t disappoint.

 

He concludes…

 

            I have a dozen books on Toyota stacked on my shelf, in order from the 

            least read to the most referred to-and Chasing the Rabbit is probably 

            going to stay right on top of the pile.

 

Chasing the Rabbit is based on my research which was initially meant to answer the question: Why was Toyota doing so well despite (a) being in a hyper competitive market, (b) starting well behind its rivals, and (c) having been studied and imitated intensely?  

 

The answer was that for all the attention that outsiders had paid to particular production control tools, the company’s real genius was its management system that fostered and sustained high velocity, high endurance improvement, innovation, and invention across a broad range of work. I later found other organizations that had arrived at similar approaches, and with the generous help of myriad practitioners showed that this ‘high velocity’ approach has great impact across a broad range of situations.       

 

Based on this research, Chasing the Rabbit explains how competitive advantage can be generated in even the most arduous markets and illustrates its points with diverse examples from heavy and high tech manufacturing, new product development and production, commercial and military situations, and health care.

 

I’m much indebted to those who helped advance this work over many years and it is my hope that their efforts and mine prove to be useful to you and your colleagues as you attempt to generate far more value with far less effort than most in your fields even imagine possible.

 

With best wishes,

Steve Spear

 

Senior Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Please visit my blog: http://chasingtherabbitbook.com “

I highly recommend this book and keep an eye out for our articles on IT and healthcare!

This article angered me for several reasons.  To imply that IT has gone too far with process standardization is wholly inaccurate IMHO.  To write the article with zero actionable take aways is very annoying.  To do all of the above based on conjecture is irresponsible.  

I often take issue with the IT press’ assumptions regarding the current state of  IT management. But this is beyond issue for me.  This kind of thinking does nothing to foster the type of intentional system design that is so desperately needed in today’s IT organizations.

The symptom of one size fits all process adtopion is just that, a symptom of poor management.  To suggest that the solution for poor management is somehow to fuzzy the lines around process and end the mellow harshing, creativity killing approach of process standardization is just hollow.

Building effective high performing systems is focused 100% on achieving company goals and if that means different approaches for different regions so be it.  Why is this so hard to see?  

Besides is this really a conversation you could imagine having with your CEO?

I just pinged Steven Spear about this and want to write a response that draws attention to the pressing issues facing IT, based on over 10 years of research and empirical data.  

/end rant