Thinking Out Loud here. As always, I’m inviting comments and perspectives.
2 totally unrelated items in the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR, Jul-Aug 2025) caught my eye.
1. “Speed Is a Leadership Decision” in an interview with Amazon’s Andy Jassy.
Amen.
When I was leading a large B2B software business, we commissioned a benchmarking study, including development cycle time. Cycle time from decision to proceed to availability. Believe it or not, if you took the fastest competitor in each phase of the process and summed them up into a best-of-best-in-class the answer was 59 weeks. (We were then averaging over 2 years.) We asked the consultant how the fast guys did it. The sheepish but profound answer was a quote from the one the fast competitors: We are fast because we decided to be fast.
We too simply decided to be fast. And, thanks to a lot of hard work, we bettered 59 weeks.
Oh, and when you get fast, a whole lot of cost and quality defects go away.
2. “Conflict and incivility in the workplace are rising, fueled by society’s increasing polarization … ” in a how-to article on conflict resolution.
With my Citizen Reed hat on, I dabble it election reform, specifically advocating for open primaries and ranked choice voting. The research shows that these reforms are effective in reducing hyper-partisanship.
It hadn’t occurred to me that hyper-partisan politics might be a problem for businesses. For example, high-performance teamwork is impaired because team members really can’t stand the politics of another team member … and can’t work together because of that animus. (In my experience, people on high-performance teams like each other.)
Is the stink of toxic, hyper-partisan politics having a widespread and significant negative impact on business performance? I really don’t know. But, after all, “polarization” did get highlighted in HBR which I value because their stuff is based on real-world research.
Should businesses get involved in reducing hyper-partisanship in politics? I really, really don’t know. In general, I think businesses should stick to serving Customers well and making a lot of money for investors. But, if an external force is negatively impacting their ability to perform for Customers and investors, shouldn’t they intervene?
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Interesting, Reed, as usual! Indeed, we don’t often think about the effect of political division on our own family or our work, but they can be powerful. I think you’re right, an “us vs. them” perspective, whether it is political or work-related or religious or personal, can lead to distrust, anger. A perspective of realizing we are all together can make us more productive and happier.
Thx, Dona.