• Developing speed requires executives to rework many of the long-standing constructs within their organisations.
• Organisational silos, unclear strategy, and slow decision making frequently interfere with attempts to boost the rate at which work gets done.
• The question isn’t whether the speed is important, but whether organisations can afford not to build speed into their culture and processes.

Dubai: Many organisations realise the value of speed during these times of flux and uncertainty and this need is significantly more often than factors such as the need to reduce costs, increase productivity or engage more effectively with customers.

In the early months of the pandemic, companies across sectors accelerated their decision making and operations to deal with fast-changing conditions.

As the adrenaline from that initial crisis-response period wears off, companies must figure out how to gain speed by design.

According to a survey conducted by McKinsey & Company, executives are focused on three courses of action to do so – making good decisions more quickly, improving communication and collaboration, and making greater use of technology.

“Given the evident benefits of organisational speed, the question isn’t whether the speed is important, but whether organisations can afford not to build speed into their culture and processes,” Aaron De Smet, senior partner at McKinsey, said.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, executives and directors said their organisations are making extensive changes with one overriding goal – to increase the speed at which they adjust strategic direction, make and implement tactical decisions, and deploy resources.

Survey findings indicate that making a special effort to gain speed pays off.

“Fast organisations outperform others by a wide margin on a range of outcomes, including profitability, operational resilience, organisational health, and growth,” Smet said.

However, he said that adding speed is not as easy as stepping on an accelerator.

The survey showed that organisational silos, unclear strategy, and slow decision making frequently interfere with attempts to boost the rate at which work gets done.

“Leaders see three primary opportunities to overcome these challenges – building faster decision-making mechanisms, improving internal communication and collaboration, and increasing the use of technology,” he said.

Seismic shift

Because of the pandemic, Smet said that executives are overseeing a seismic shift in how organisations work, spanning tactical adjustments in areas such as meeting structure and cadence, and day-to-day management, as well as enterprise-wide changes in leadership and talent management, use of technology, and innovation.

Moreover, survey respondents expect that at least some of these changes will remain in place once the pandemic ends.

Fifty-five per cent of the leaders anticipate that at least half of their organisation’s workforce will be fully or partially remote post-crisis.

While the expectations vary widely by industry—from 69 per cent predicting this level of remote work in technology, telecommunications, and media to 43 per cent in advanced industries—even in the industries where manufacturing, patient care, and sales transactions often require people at offices, stores, plants, and other company facilities, a significant portion of the workforce may be partially or fully remote.

Elizabeth Mygatt, Associate Partner at McKinsey, said that the findings show that speed is a crucial predictor of each of these outcomes.

However, she said that speed is hard to come by and added that developing speed can require executives to rework many of the long-standing constructs within their organisations.

Across the industries, she said that executives most frequently named organisational silos, slow decision making, and lack of strategic clarity as factors that limit the rate at which their organisations get work done.

“None of these challenges is new, but they can feel more acute because the pace of change is increasing and the pandemic crisis poses an immediate threat to revenue,” she said.

Improving communication and collaboration

Faced with the need to roll out technologies that enable people to work remotely, Mygatt said that leaders have taken the opportunity to accelerate technology adoption and innovation across their organisations.

“Some of the speed organisations are gaining is the result of crisis-management-like ways of working, but much of it can and should be sustained in new ways of working as organisations navigate their way through the pandemic,” she said.

Brooke Weddle, Partner at McKinsey, said that respondents most frequently cite more efficient decision making, clearer communication, and the use of technology to better engage with customers and employees as primary opportunities to achieve greater speed.

Many respondents noted that communication across areas of the business would enhance the quality of decision making, promote the sharing of assets such as data, and prevent work from being duplicated.

Also, leaders said increased communication between employees at various levels of the organisation will help useful information reach people more efficiently.

“Organisations can benefit from moving toward more nonhierarchical, agile models of communication and collaboration that improve the efficiency of information sharing. Also, improving communication and collaboration starts at the top: leaders should charge teams with specific, customer- or employee-focused missions, and employees must be clear about what needs to be completed by whom, when, and why,” Weddle said.

The leaders surveyed mentioned opportunities to increase speed by making greater use of technology.

 “Making greater use of technology to enable a hybrid working model can provide an organisation with greater flexibility and improved productivity, and digital technology can help develop employees’ functional skills through online and hands-on learning,” Smet said.

Furthermore, he said that organisations can gain speed and better meet customer needs by embedding technology within their ecosystem.