The idea for this book came to me at a leadership team meeting of forty global supply chain leaders, who collectively oversaw ten thousand employees. I was scheduled to present a three-hour workshop titled “How the Effective Leader Spends Time.” About thirty minutes before the meeting started, as people were entering the room, chatting and getting coffee, a man came up to me—to introduce himself, I thought. Instead, without even giving me his name or shaking my hand, he leaned in close to me and spoke in a hiss: “I'm really glad you're here today. I could be so much more productive if it weren't for all these people.” He looked pointedly at a few in particular, nodding toward them as if to call them out.
“Ah, this is really why they brought me in,” I thought.
I'm the proud daughter of a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and grew up on the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I have two brothers, one a year older and one a year younger. Not having a sister, and with relatively few girls in the neighborhood, I grew up somewhat a tomboy. I wore Toughskins hand-me-downs from my older brother. (Remember those? We really did grow out of them before the pants wore out.) I could shoot BB guns with great accuracy, climb trees, build forts, and win wrestling matches. I loved anything that went fast—the Thunderbirds (a performance team of F-16 Fighting Falcons) flying over our heads, trains, and cars. Especially cars.
For as long as I can remember, I wanted a Corvette. I remember seeing one as a little girl and asking my father what it was. I loved the “swoopy hood,” as I called it. But since I live in south Denver now, a car like that is rather impractical, as it can't be driven for much of the year and would just sit covered in the garage.
In July 2015, when I was honored to be inducted into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame by the National Speakers Association, my husband John surprised me with the gift of a Corvette. Not just any Corvette—a red convertible 650hp Z06 loaded with all the options, with a black racing stripe and a black and red leather interior. She has a custom Colorado license plate emblazoned with ZORA, which is the name of the Belgian-born American engineer whose work at Chevrolet earned him the nickname “Father of the Corvette,”[1]and which also happens to rhyme with Laura. Obviously, I love that car—she's a dream come true.
Because I was raised in the military, I am quite the rule follower, so I followed all the manufacturer's rules. I didn't take Zora over 4,000 RPM until after her 2,000-mile break-in period; I got an oil change at 500 and 2,000 miles, and then she was ready to really drive.
However, I didn't really know how to drive her. Oh, I thought I knew how to drive her—until I attended a two-day “Corvette Owners School” at Ron Fellows Performance Driving School at Spring Mountain Motor Resort in Pahrump, Nevada. Then I learned how shockingly little I knew about my car's capabilities.
They gave me a Z06 to drive that was identical to mine in every way, minus the convertible top. Before I got behind the wheel, I rode shotgun with the instructor for a demo ride—and promptly left my throat on the starting line as we went from 0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds. I had no idea the car could be driven that way. On several occasions, I honestly thought we were going to crash as he roared into the hairpin turns, but the car just sat down and hugged the track.
I was so excited that I whooped and hollered at the end of the run. I couldn't wait to drive! I spent the next two days unwinding how he did that, and by the end of the course, I was driving less like a grandma on a Sunday outing and a little more like my instructor. (Not to brag, guys, but I was the only woman in the class, and my times were better than all the men's except one!)
Until I learned how to enter turns, hit the apex, accelerate out of turns correctly, understand oversteer and understeer, and use proper speed, braking, paddle shifting, and torque, I wasn't very effective as a driver.
So why am I telling you all this? Because it's the same with your team. You have at your disposal what I consider to be the most powerful productivity machine in existence. You may think you know how to drive your “Team Car” correctly, thank you very much. But until you really understand the capabilities of the people around you, you won't be the most effective and efficient worker you can be.
That's why I wrote Faster Together—to put you in the driver's seat of your Team Car, and teach you and your team members how to accelerate your team's productivity on the track to success. Obviously, four people can't ride in a Corvette the way the cover jokingly illustrates, but you're all in it together.
Circling back to our meeting, the leader who talked to me had it exactly backward—he was successful because of “those people,” not despite them. Even the best single person can't succeed alone, not even you. By the time the seminar ended, it was clear he was one of the biggest problems. Individual productivity is just the beginning of business profitability; the real winner is team productivity. Despite how highly that leader thought of himself, the team was much faster together. By the end of this book, you'll truly understand the abilities of your team. So, rev your team's engine, and you'll soon be roaring down the track together!
