Strategic Management in Turbulent Times: The Short and Glorious History of Accelerated Decision Making at Hewlett-Packard

This article addresses two common decision-making problems that plague organizations operating in rapidly-changing environments: (1) the tendency for leaders to bog down in the decision-making process and overlook essential cues in their company's environments that have a direct bearing on future success, and (2) the tendency to favor implementation over innovation during periods of great uncertainty, a propensity identified as the exploration-exploitation dilemma by James March. Based on interviews with senior executives, managers, internal consultants and clients, this article describes the inner-workings of the efforts of a leading company - Hewlett-Packard Co - to address these two problems through the creation of a unique internal consulting capability called Acceleration Services. Findings suggest that successfully accelerating both innovation and implementation requires understanding their design implications: while innovation requires a certain amount of play, socialization and relaxation to encourage dialogue and divergence of ideas, successful implementation requires hard-core, no-frills discipline to support discussion and to force tough decisions. Despite widespread praise for the capability's effectiveness, in an ironic twist it was ultimately closed, illustrating the tenacity of the tendency to favor exploitation over exploration. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]