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I am among those who have read and admire Donald Mitchell's previously published The 2,000 Percent Solution: Free Your Organization from "Stalled" Thinking to Achieve Exponential Success that he co-authored with Carol Coles and Robert Metz. Its subtitle correctly suggests why the authors wrote it: To "free" organizations from "stalled" thinking so that they can achieve exponential success. Note the words enclosed by quotation marks. Most organizations (especially the larger ones) can easily become captive to basic assumptions and presumptions which are no longer valid...or at least appropriate. As a result, those involved feel obligated to defend the status quo. Their thinking is stalled. Managers become bureaucrats. Because they are defending the status quo, they resist and resent any suggested changes of it. Of course, as a result, change does occur: The organization deteriorates. The "best and the brightest" employees leave as do under-served customers. How to solve such problems? Effectively apply the "2,000 percent solution" process that the co-authors explain with rigor and eloquence.
I am delighted that Mitchell and Coles have co-authored The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution in which they examine "the fast and effective road less traveled for creating 400 times greater profits and effectiveness." Of course, the ultimate results achieved will vary from one organization to another and depend on several factors that include strong leadership at all levels and within all areas of operations; provision of sufficient resources; effective communication, cooperation, and especially collaboration among everyone involved; accurate and consistent measurement of process improvement initiatives; and perhaps most important of all, a shared and sustained commitment to achieving to achieving the desired objectives, whatever they may be.
Mitchell and Coles carefully organize their material as follows. First, they explain what a "2,000 percent solution": any method of operating that enables an organization to do what it does with only 0-4% of the time and resources it now expends, or accomplish an increase of 20 times in results while expending the same or less resources They then explain why such solutions are available for almost any business activity if decision makers (a) select the highest payoff opportunities first and then (b) develop the skills needed throughout the given organization to design and implement the 2,000 percent solutions.
Then in the Introduction, they observe that when there are initiatives to make large improvements with the 2,000 percent solution process, there is a tendency to "take a more-traveled road" by applying that process to only one improvement at a time. Invoking a metaphor from one of Robert Frost's poems, Mitchell and Cole observe that relatively few "take the poetic road `less traveled by' to seek first expanding usage 21 times...but that road `makes all the difference.'" Why? Because (mixing metaphors) picking what is often referred to as "low hanging fruit" is far easier and less perilous than attempting expanding usage.
Successful simultaneous application of 2,000 percent solution process to both usage and delivery effectiveness, two complementary solution processes, can to gain 20 times more benefits than from either alone. "That's what we mean by a 2,000 percent squared solution. You can also think of this concept as developing a 40,000 percent solution, or a 400 times increase in benefits."
The balance of the material is presented within two parts:
Part One: Build the High-Speed Road to 21 Times More Availability
Comment: Mitchell and Coles explain how a 2,000 percent solution that can achieve what Jim Collins would characterize as a BHAG (i.e. "big hairy audacious goal") but I presume to add a major caveat: there is no way to exceed, achieve, or even come near such a goal without formulating and then implementing an appropriate strategy to achieve only results that are most important to the given enterprise. Once again, I am reminded of what Peter Drucker observed in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."
Part Two: Follow the High-Speed Road Inexpensively to Enjoy Increased
Benefits for 96 Percent Less Cost
Comment: Mitchell and Coles focus on how to make large cost reductions that are independent of the expansion size involved while achieving economies of scale and a more appropriate distribution of shared costs. In Part One, they recommend taking the road less traveled, building a new, high-speed highway. In Part Two, they extend the "road" metaphor when explaining how to maximize efficiencies during the journey to achieve optimal solutions (i.e. those with the greatest ROI). They examine a number of applications that have a cost-reduction focus.
For me, some of the most valuable material is provided in Chapter 12, "Write a Great Owner's Manual: Add Do-It-Yourself Features." Long ago, I realized that no two organizations are exactly the same, nor is any one organization the same two days in a row. Mitchell and Coles' point, with which I totally agree, is that it remains for decision-makers to collaborate on determining which "primal solutions" are their organization's highest priority. With all due respect to the methodology that Mitchell and Coles propose, it must be "translated" (if that's the correct word) by those who are responsible for implementing it and then customized to accommodate their organization's specific circumstances.
Worst case; let's say that no 2,000% solutions are achieved. Would 500% percent be acceptable, at least for the time being? Process improvement is a journey, not a destination, and it never ends. Build on the 500% solutions as you continue the journey.
More a quibble than a complaint, the material in this book requires a comprehensive index. The next edition should have one. That said, credit Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles with another brilliant achievement.
The substantial value of this book will be increased even more (if not by 40,000%!) if read in combination with one of more of these: Enterprise Architecture As Strategy co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson, Richard Ogle's Smart World, Henry Chesbrough's Open Business Models and the more recently published Open Innovation, Vince Thompson's Ignited, and Oren Harari's Break from the Pack.
Click Here to see more reviews about: The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution: The Fast and Effective Road Less Traveled for Creating 400 Times Greater Profits and Effectiveness
The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution is the first book to show you how to add 20 times more revenues at 96 percent less cost from the same time and effort. This book builds on the principles in the world-wide best seller, The 2,000 Percent Solution. Examples alternate between explaining how for-profit companies can grow profits by 400 times and showing how nonprofit organizations can serve 400 times as many beneficiaries. 'The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution is a brilliant distillation of essential management principles that everyone, and I mean everyone, can use to drive dramatic acceleration of performance. It's packed with great stories that make the principles easy to understand, embrace, and apply. Whether you're a leader in a big, small, for-profit, or not-for-profit organization, you need this book.' Rosabeth Moss Kanter - Harvard Business School, best-selling author of Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End
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