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    Accelerating Performance by Colin Price & Sharon Toye Summary

    Accelerating Performance
    Colin Price & Sharon Toye
    3.5 (4 Reviews)
    LeadershipBusinessProductivity
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    Overview of Accelerating Performance

    In "Accelerating Performance," Price and Toye reveal how top companies achieve agility - not just speed. What makes McKinsey's research groundbreaking? Their counterintuitive finding that "soft stuff" like culture drives hard results, transforming how industry titans approach leadership in volatile markets.

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    When you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.

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    Accelerating Performance isn't just a book — it's a masterclass in Leadership. To help you absorb its lessons in the way that works best for you, we offer five unique learning modes. Whether you're a deep thinker, a fast learner, or a story lover, there's a mode designed to fit your style.

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    Key Takeaways

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    Why Most Companies Move Like Glaciers While Others Sprint Like Startups

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    What separates a company worth $437 from one worth $211 after seven years? It's not luck, timing, or even industry choice. When researchers tracked 23 "superaccelerator" companies against their peers, they discovered something that should make every executive uncomfortable: the difference wasn't about having better technology or smarter strategy. These elite performers had cracked a code that eludes most organizations as they grow - they'd figured out how to stay fast while getting big. Think about it: we've all watched nimble startups get acquired by corporate giants, only to see their innovation engine sputter and die within months. The culprit? Organizational gravity. As companies scale, they naturally accumulate layers, committees, approval processes, and cultural barnacles that slow everything down. But what if it didn't have to be this way? What if large organizations could maintain the hunger and agility of their startup days? That's exactly what this research reveals - and the formula is surprisingly counterintuitive. Walk through London's financial district and you're surrounded by monuments to organizational failure. BP's $65 billion Deepwater Horizon disaster didn't happen because of bad engineering - it happened because safety warnings were routinely ignored in a culture obsessed with cost-cutting. The BBC's decades-long abuse scandal persisted not due to lack of information, but because "rigid management chains" made accountability impossible. Barclays and HSBC paid billions for ethical violations rooted in cultures that worshipped short-term profits above all else. Here's the uncomfortable truth: these weren't isolated incidents. They're symptoms of a deeper disease that infects organizations when "the actors become more important than the audience" - when institutions start serving themselves rather than their customers. For decades, executives have dismissed organizational culture as "the soft stuff," something to address after hitting financial targets. But this thinking is backwards. Culture isn't separate from performance - it's the invisible architecture that determines whether your strategy succeeds or fails.

    2

    The Culture Crisis and Private Equity's Acceleration Laboratory

    3

    Embracing Uncertainty and the Power of Vision Over Planning

    4

    The Thirteen Levers That Separate Winners From Laggards

    5

    Why Most Teams Fail Before They Start

    6

    Choosing Your Acceleration Recipe and Mastering It

    7

    Moving at the Speed of Change