"Time is the enemy of the poor business and the friend of the great business.” – Warren Buffett

Ambitious companies build momentum. They reinforce success and cut their losses on failures. Inertia is the enemy. Standing still in any business is an invitation to others to commoditise or eclipse your product or service. This is especially true as globalisation exposes businesses to a greater number of competitors.

Make your mind up

A Bain & Co survey of 350 global organisations found that only about 15 percent of companies are consistently good at decision-making. Splitting the process of gathering the relevant information and recommendations away from the process of deciding can eliminate bottlenecks. As the Bain management consultants say: “Consensus is a worthy goal but can be an obstacle to action or a recipe for lowest-common-denominator compromise.” They advocate a well-informed single decision-maker. Ambitious organisations find ways to collaborate, to find and use the best information and to reach decisions quickly.

Boost your productivity

Once a decision has been made, employee productivity is critical for building momentum. The UK has a poor record when it comes to productivity. The French manage to produce 29 percent more output per hour worked and the US manages 16 percent. Working more hours than the rest of the world doesn’t seem to help either as both countries beat us on output per employee too. The fault is not in our stars but in our IT and our management.

Ambitious companies can do several things to boost productivity. The first is to improve management. UK managers are perceived to lag behind their colleagues in France, Germany and the US in terms of competence and experience, according to a survey by the International Institute of Management Development[. The Office of National Statistics found that US-owned firms operating in the UK (and presumably applying US management practices) are more productive than their UK-owned matching competitors.

Investing in IT also helps. There’s a straight correlation between the number of staff using computers and the internet and the value added per worker (see graph). Not only did IT drive increases in productivity, but also the benefits were greatest in companies that adapted their internal organisation to use it effectively.

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