The Art of War: Planning an Attack

By: Sun Tzu

You must move as quickly as the wind.

The value of time, that is of being a little ahead of your opponent, often provides greater advantage than superior numbers or greater resources.

Though I have heard of successful military operations that were clumsy but swift, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

Moving with Speed: the Four Components

Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton in their book It's not the big that eat the small... it's the fast that eat the slow describe the following four characteristic features of fast-moving companies

Fast thinking: anticipating the future, spotting trends before others, challenging assumptions, and creating a corporate environment where the best idea – regardless of origin – wins.

Fast decision-making: establishing corporate guiding principles, blowing off stifling bureaucratic structures, shuffling portfolios, constantly reassessing everything, and matching the decision to the consequence.

Fast to market: getting to the market faster through removing in-built speed-breakers, abandoning traditional visions and missions and launching a crusade instead, owning and exploiting your competitive advantage, getting vendors and suppliers operating on your timetable, staying beneath the radar, and building virtuous circles of speed.

Sustaining speed: maintaining velocity through working on your business, injecting the relentless growth attitude into the firm, being ruthless with resources, building a scoreboard that measures activity, staying financially flexible, proving the math, institutionalizing innovation, and staying close to the customer.