Strategic Speed: Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution

PROLOGUE

The Hazards of Speed

JIM VAN ZOREN was speeding down the highway toward his office in the early-morning darkness. The road stretched flat and straight for miles. “It’s just me and the cows,” he mused, as he pressed the accelerator of his Lexus GS10. He still missed the challenging curves of the northeastern parkways that he had driven for fifteen years in his last corporate assignment. It was only a year ago that he had accepted the position of chief information officer at SmartCom, a large, midwestern U.S. telecommunications company. SmartCom’s CEO, David Hopkins, had gone looking outside the company for a CIO who could shake things up. The company was struggling to get control over its IT systems, which were a hodgepodge of ...