Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously

by Jeff Gothelf

Finally, leadership realized that top-down decision making wasn’t going to work if this team was going create a great product in twelve months. There simply wasn’t enough time for each decision to be run up the chain for the traditional set of approvals and sign-offs. The team would need more decision-making authority than normal. By embedding decision-making autonomy in the team, leadership enabled team members to move quickly enough to make several iterations over the course of the year. The end results speak for themselves. The product is selling at twice the normal rate, costs half as much, and got to market twice as fast as previous refrigerators. Although the refrigerator itself is not a software-driven product, the techniques and attitudes used in pulling together the team, creating its mission, and empowering it to pursue that mission are techniques that work in any domain in which teams face uncertainty.