In many science classes, students stare in wonder at a simple experiment. Line up several metronomes, the mechanical pendulums that musicians use to maintain a consistent beat when they play.
Start them off out of phase, so that, for example, one swings all the way to the right while another is at the six o-clock position and another is all the way to the left, at nine o-clock. If they are close enough and you wait long enough, you will see something astonishing. Eventually, the metronomes synchronize with one another, as if they were one, with no external intervention.
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| Philp Anderson |
This phenomenon is called “entrainment.” It occurs whenever several rhythms become locked to one another, so they share a common rate. Other examples occur in nature, and they are ubiquitous in social experience. For example, people who live together often tend to get hungry at the same time after a while, even if originally they tended to eat at different times. If you go onto a busy train and unobtrusively tap something, like your foot or a pencil, you’ll notice that after a time, others on board unconsciously adopt the same rhythm.
We also become entrained to our work. One of the most revolutionary aspects of the industrial revolution was the introduction of strict time standards to coordinate interlocked processes such as the operation of a train network. The rhythm of village life was slow, as we can see in rural India today, and for many who grew up in the countryside, the sheer speed and relentless pace of factory work was shocking. And in the modern day, people who operated on “internet time” once stood out, but as the legions of Blackberry users has grown, more and more people live their lives at a far more hectic pace than before.
Entrainment can be found everywhere in organizational life. Every organization has a characteristic metabolic rate, a pace at which things happen. As part of the division of labor, subunits interconnect with one another, constantly passing work back and forth and coordinating tasks. Interlocked processes move forward at the pace of the slowest unit, so over time people who have to work with one another adopt a common rhythm. Eventually, its typical pace becomes a distinguishing trait of an organization.
Anyone who has worked in a public sector organization knows why employees say they work “on government time.” I recently worked with a stock exchange that was spun out from a government agency to become an independent company, and changing the organization’s characteristic rhythm was near the top of the new CEO‘s agenda. When they worked for the government, employees who tackled a project methodically estimated how long it would take, then added 10%. In the private sector, in contrast, one asks how long a window of opportunity will be open or how long it will take competitors to reach an objective, and that becomes the pacing mechanism. Private enterprises become entrained to their competitors.
If you are an entrepreneur, you are your organization’s metronome. The organization’s metabolism becomes entrained to you, to the characteristic pace at which you operate. In part this is because people learn to send you decisions “just in time,” so they aren’t stuck in a wait loop while you ponder your options. But even more importantly, people learn unconsciously to absorb your rhythm. How rapidly you take on new tasks, complete existing ones, and change your agenda becomes the organizational norm. The length and pace of the meetings you hold become an informal standard for all other meetings in the organization. The amount of time it takes you to listen and respond to others reverberates throughout your enterprise.
As the pacemaker for your organization, you are the single biggest influence on the cycle time for the key processes in the enterprise. How can you set the pace so that your venture strikes the right balance so your organization gets things done without delay, but still takes the time to assure quality work? I’d like to suggest seven practices of effective organizational pacemakers that can help you make nimbleness and agility a hallmark of the company you lead.
First, hire people who fit your pace, or perhaps even push you a little bit. One reason why ventures often stumble when hiring people from larger firms is that it’s difficult for executives from an established enterprise to adjust to the pace of an entrepreneurial environment. When you interview people, don’t just look for good habits and strong skills. Develop a feel for the characteristic pace at which someone gets things done. When they discuss key tasks, ask them how they set deadlines and decided whether to speed up or slow down. When you talk about the work you need them to do, ask them to give you a timeline of how they would approach key tasks and how long it has taken them to do similar things before. Find out whether they have ever had jobs where they were required to speed up their habitual cycle times. If someone is out of synch with your venture’s characteristic rhythm and has no experience adjusting to a faster pace, trouble lies ahead.
Second, remember that when it comes to speed, more is not better. A relentless pressure to speed everything up all the time can backfire. This month’s INSEAD article in DARE profiles how Bharti Enterprises and its flagship brand, Airtel, preserve the entrepreneurial spirit. Airtel is an inspiring example of how a mammoth enterprise can sustain the spirit of a venture. However, Airtel’s senior executives are aware that sometimes the company’s bias for action can go too far. Said one to me, “Our characteristic mode is all too often ready-fire-aim.” Airtel people are so used to working miracles overnight that proper planning can take a back seat. The sheer ability of the people who work at Airtel usually compensates for the fallout, but a key element of the professionalism that senior managers try to instil in executives is to upgrade their planning and process skills.
Third, don’t substitute time for cleverness. Entrepreneurs are used to working long hours. Sometimes, this leads to a belief that any problem can be solved simply by throwing enough time at it. That path leads to burnout, unhappiness, and broken families. Eliminating waste isn’t a priority when you are used to succeeding through sheer hard work and endurance. But finding a way to do more with less, to eliminate or streamline processes that have outlived their sell-by date, is one of the most important things a good organizational pacemaker does.
Fourth, manage processes by event-driven milestones, not just by the calendar. When you carry out a project, a useful habit to develop as you plan the next step in your journey is to ask, “What data would persuade me the course I’m on is wrong? How would I know that I’m ahead of, behind, or on schedule?” The next milestone then is driven by what events will generate those data. At what point would we know that the next step forward is not happening the way we thought it would? Set a milestone at that point, and you can adjust as soon as you have the data to show you the way forward.
Fifth, exploit the power of “halfway.” Some fascinating social psychology experiments with work teams show that when a group hits what it believes is the halfway point of a project phase, it suddenly develops a sense of urgency. The notion that there is less time remaining than has been spent to date changes people’s attitudes and gets them moving forward. Consequently, a series of shorter deadlines produces more progress because people hit the “halfway” point more rapidly. Every phase proceeds more quickly when you break work into simple steps with shorter time limits.
Sixth, the way to speed up a process is to cut the cycle time of the slowest link. Organizations become entrained to the slowest work unit or to the step in a process that causes the most delay. You make a lot more progress by focusing on the slowest step in an activity chain than you do trying to improve all processes at the same rate.
Finally, design things to succeed even if they are partially completed. A project that produces 70% of total progress in the first 40% of the time allocated is much more likely to get results than one where the benefits show up at the end. Every time you take on a lengthy task, ask yourself “What would happen if this never gets to be more than 50% finished?” If a majority of the progress can be achieved even though the project is never actually completed, you can cut off time-consuming steps at the end and move on to the next project.
Keeping a venture nimble as it grows is one of the main challenges an entrepreneur faces. Whether you like it or not, people in your venture will unconsciously synchronize with you. By acting as your organization’s pacemaker and observing a few simple rules, you can make speed one of your organization’s main competitive advantages.
The author is INSEAD Alumni Fund Professor of Entrepreneurship, Director, Rudolf and Valeria Maag International Center for Entrepreneurship and Director, 3i Venturelab
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