Chapter One A NEW RACE At a time when the world land speed record was 394 miles per hour (mph), the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), which regulated the land speed record, required that a car have four wheels and that at least 60 percent of the power be delivered through them. Craig Breedlove, a former U.S. fireman, ignored the FIA and on August 5, 1963, in a dart-shaped jet car, averaged 407.447 mph and unofficially broke the old record that had stood for more than fifteen years. In doing so, Breedlove came close to becoming airborne. A year later, Donald Campbell of England, who had been working since 1956 on a car that met FIA requirements, broke the official world record but not Breedlove's unofficial one. When the two friends met, Campbell congratulated Breedlove for not only reaching 407 mph but also forcing the FIA to introduce an unlimited class for the record. According to Campbell, it had never occurred to him to ignore the rules. He never again attempted a land speed record, and Breedlove went on to become the first man to travel 500 and then 600 mph on land. After he broke the land speed record in 1963, Breedlove described his record-breaking six seconds as "cold blooded." He said there was no time to think. "I was concentrating so hard, I could only make two 600-mph runs in a day. I was driving the car to within an accuracy of ten inches at that speed. You could see every detail passing underneath." When his parachute opened, deceleration at 130 mph-a-second upset his middle ear and displaced the horizon. "You're certain you're driving vertically down a mine shaft. Get scared, and from then on you are in dead trouble. It's not fun." He said that there was a cycle of triumph and disaster every few hours and that, in forty days on the desert, the team members came to know one another almost telepathically. He was then asked, "What if things go wrong?" His response was equally insightful: "There's always the moment of shock. Thereafter I'm busy looking at the options and making decisions. The difference between the successful high-risk athlete and the majority of us is that one will continue to choose options, no matter how rapidly they are presented or how unpleasant, while the other will freeze up and hit the brakes." Breedlove recently was asked, "What is it like to drive this fast?" His response was very revealing: "The biggest fight you have is to keep your emotions calm. The only way to do the job is to get in the car and get the belts done up and the engine started. And course clearance. And you're on your own. If ever there's a moment you're alone with God, this is it. There's a lot of noise. It's rough...All business." ALL BUSINESS Breedlove's example illustrates the mindset that I believe will be required of people who will succeed in the complex business environment of the 21st century. Successful business leaders throughout much of the 20th century were more like Donald Campbell. They played by the rules and, if they executed well, they succeeded. Much of the emphasis in the latter part of the 20th century on reengineering and best practices has been a reflection of playing by the rules. How can we do better those things that we currently are doing? Who is doing a better job of playing by today's rules? As we enter the business world of the 21st century, I am convinced that the leaders who will succeed in a big way are those who have Breedlove's mindset. They have a clear objective in mind and are willing to challenge the old ways of doing things to achieve that objective. They often not only win the race but change the very rules of the game in doing so. Jack Welch, Andy Grove, Bill Gates, John Chambers, Jim Clark, Michael Nell, and Jeff Bezos are just a few of the names that come to mind when we think of business leaders who are challenging the rules and have become front-runners in winning their respective races. Like Breedlove, these business leaders have confronted a very challenging world. They face a tremendous amount of noise and distractions, and have had to make lots of decisions very rapidly. But they have been able to focus on the important issues at hand and have shown a willingness to make tough decisions. They seem at times to be engaged in a delicate balancing act of pushing an organization toward the limits of what is possible but not allowing it to fly apart. A NEW WINNER As impressive as Craig Breedlove's racing career has been, he lost the land speed record in 1983 to Richard Noble of England. On October 4, 1983, almost six years after his first car crashed, Noble, a former industrial products salesman, covered a mile measured on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada in his jet car, Thrust 2 , at 650 mph. When combined with an earlier round, it gave him an average of 633--a new land speed record. Interestingly, one of his most difficult moments came after he had achieved the record. According to Noble, "We were on the back side of the mountain. What next?" Ultimately, his new challenge became to break the sound barrier on land--a goal that both he and Craig Breedlove would seek. On October 13, 1997, Richard Noble's team achieved the goal of driving through Mach 1 on land and two days later became the first to achieve a supersonic two-way FIA record. His Thrust SSC (SuperSonic Car) had succeeded where Breedlove's Spirit of America car had failed. In reading accounts of his six-year effort, I was struck by how little attention is focused on the man Richard Noble. All through the descriptions that I have read of his success, the emphasis was on "the team," and "the organisation." Even the headline of his November 1997 Web site update was entitled, "We Did It--And We Did It Together!" Perhaps most significantly, he chose a younger man, Andy Green, to be the actual driver, a man he called the "immediate hero." According to Noble, "It was a painful decision but I'm not as young as I was, nor as fit, and I realized someone was going to have to go through the nightmare of raising the money." The team also consisted of a group of experts employed by Noble. In addition, he signed up more than 180 corporations to be part of the team and developed a club (the Mach 1 Club) that approximately 5,000 people joined so that they could feel some sense of membership in the project. He also made extensive use of the Internet to communicate to that community (as well as the world beyond) about both "the good news and the bad." Richard Nobel began the final update on his web site with the exclamation: "What a tremendous experience!" Then he went on to speak of his impressions of the supersonic runs as a "mixture of awe and downright fear." This is a very human way of speaking of an uncertain world that confronts more and more businesspeople each day. On one hand, there is the awe of the unknown--the volatile, chaotic world that may be full of opportunities. On the other hand, there is the fear of what could happen and the impulse to stay in a safer, more controlled environment. It is keeping an organization balanced between the two emotions--near the edge--that seems to me to be the true organizational and leadership challenge of the 21st century. It will require the mindset of Craig Breedlove and the organizational skills of Richard Noble. ORGANIZATIONS ON THE EDGE Through my consulting and executive education work in the 1990s, I became increasingly convinced that all companies face an increasingly uncertain and chaotic world. To try to make some sense of this world, I initially chose to focus my research around the sector that appeared to me to be the most volatile of all--the technology sector, broadly defined. I was able to spend a few years working with and around a variety of small technology companies. In doing so I became especially interested in how organizations succeed in a high-speed and very uncertain environment--not unlike the environment faced by Richard Noble and his team. I paid particular attention to the Internet segment, which seems to be especially chaotic and uncertain. I then began to look for larger, well-established companies that seemed to be adapting well to significant change. This research has been a combination of fieldwork and library hours in which I have focused on two broad types of organizations--companies in the technology sector and relatively diversified companies that compete in a variety of sectors, including technology. In the former category I have examined Intel, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, America Online, Intuit, SAS, AGCS, Compaq, and Dell. In addition, I have included a collection of pure Internet companies--Netscape, Yahoo!, Cybercash, Amazon, Virtual Radio, Intelligent Interaction, College Town, Auto-by-Tel, Proxicom, Virtual Vineyard, and CDnow. Among highly diversified companies, I have included 3M, General Electric, Disney, Sony, Philips, Bertelsmann, Emerson Electric, and Mercedes Benz. Although most have been exemplars of success, most have experienced an occasional setback as well, including some that are struggling now and even one internet company that has gone out of business. Nevertheless, I believe it is these companies that have the most to teach us about managing in the chaotic and uncertain world of the 21st century. I want to stress to the reader that this book is not a book about technology. Rather, the thesis of the book is that all organizations are facing greater volatility and uncertainty, and that there is much to be learned about coping with such a world from those companies that are already operating in it. Those companies have already begun a new race--the race for the future. Copyright © 2000 William E. Fulmer. All rights reserved.
