Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Managing Differences
Here are four recommendations for maximizing performance and innovation by creating conditions in which diverse team members can work “at the edge” of their capabilities.
Creating the conditions in which people of varying backgrounds, behaviors and inclinations can maximize their contributions will inevitably transcend the 20th-century management style of making things and people fit into systems that execute efficiently, states Dr. Robert Austin, director of Cutter’s Innovation & Enterprise Agility practice.
Financial crises notwithstanding, the 20th-century virtues of cost reduction and efficiency have lost some of their competitive value. "These virtues remain very important, of course; but no matter how well firms lower costs and promote efficiencies, competitors within emerging economies, especially China and India where there is access to a nearly infinite labor supply, have a structural advantage,” Austin says. “The playing field has shifted, and it's not a fair fight, no matter how good you are at efficiency. Sooner or later you'll have to compete differently: by convincing buyers that what you can provide is better, and more valuable — even if it does cost more (and it will) than what can be obtained elsewhere."
In this kind of competition, it's not the 90 percent you do right, or even …
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"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself." - Charlie Chaplin |