Tempo, Maneuverability, and Initiative

Tempo. Most people are familiar with it in the musical sense. It’s the speed, cadence, rhythm that the music is played. It drives the music forward - and pulls it back. But there’s more to tempo than a musical beat. In war, like in business, tempo - the speed at which you can transition from one task to the next - is a critical component for victory.

No single person nor department owns tempo. Somebody can’t just shout, “I now control the tempo,” and take charge. If you operate at a faster tempo than your cycle time allows, then you’ll get thrashing. The rate of tempo emerges organically as companies move around that action loop of sensing, deciding and acting.

Tempo emerges from the convergence of architecture, infrastructure, organization, and mindset. All these things have to align to achieve tempo. None of them can be changed in isolation.

In this talk, we will look at different models for transforming an organization to high tempo and high performance. We'll see how that can get derailed and what to do about it.