Joel Levitt, President, Springfield Resources

We live in a world where almost any organization’s leaders want change yesterday. Our competitors are getting better faster. Our shareholders jump ship unless we produce more sales, profits, lower costs and increase their shareholder value on a quarter by quarter basis.

I just attended a live meeting of a global health care company with representatives from several US, European and Asian plants. They were tasked with transforming their workflow in engineering. The vice president of engineering said flat out, “what we’ve done in the past (as far as change initiatives) in 15 months now must take 15 weeks, if it would have taken 6 months; you’ve now got 6 weeks.”