Two Minute Drill

What business teams can learn from football when the game is on the line Companies and governmental organizations have spent years of training and billions of dollars on improvement efforts, yet continue to slip behind in competitiveness, quality, and innovation. The authors of The Two-Minute Drill maintain that organizations often do what no football team would in this situation-send in back-office staff to slow down the game and study every move in detail-while the clock ticks down, creating bureaucratic inertia instead of focused, coordinated leadership. Based on original research with hundreds of companies, the authors show how managers can create rapid change without wasting the most precious resource they have: time. Clinton O. Longenecker (Toledo, OH) is the Stranahan Professor of Leadership and Organizational Excellence in the College of Business Administration at the University of Toledo. Greg R. Papp (Holland, OH) is President of Cube Culture Corporation, a consulting firm specializing in performance improvement. Timothy C. Stansfield (Toledo, OH) is President of IET, Inc., a manufacturing consulting firm that has worked with 1,400 manufacturing plants over the past 20 years.