Manuel Fernandez
Management Policies
Book Report
In the book of Colossians, chapter 4 verse 5, Paul advises the members of the church in
Colossus to “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time”. This
verse emphasizes the importance of time as an essential resource, something that we
should value and not dispose of carelessly, as it is irreplaceable. The premise that time
is an essential resource is picked up by the authors of the book “Competing Against
Time”, which argues that time is perhaps the most important differentiator in today’s
business world. Whether it comes to response time, predicting future trends in pricing
and demand, innovation, and manufacturing, time is the main differentiator between
successful companies and also rans on this globalized business world.
Competing Against Time gives us multiple of examples of companies who lead the shift
into time-based strategies from around the world. Most of the examples are from the
80’s, with the most recent one being from the 90’s, making the book feel a little bit
dated. But in spite of the fact that the material is old, the premise has aged well, and
many of the successful principles proposed in the book are being currently practiced by
companies that are more recent successes.
This is especially true in recent years, as technology has brought an exponential
increase in innovation, bringing in a completely new episode of change in business
strategy. Research in Competing Against Time missed out on this monumental shift in
technology by just a few years, rendering certain parts of the book obsolete in
hindsight. Statements like “Today, episodic changes in business strategy are fewer and
they are being supplanted by evolutionary change” seem outdated in light of recent
events. According to British journal The Economist “Productivity surged in the late
1990s and early 2000s as e-mail, digital databases and the web spread”, this surge in
productivity led to an annual increase in output per hour worked of 2.5%, from 1995 to
2004. This increase happened during the initial stages of the tech boom.
But, this book does provide lessons and valuable principles that are relevant today,
even to those companies plying their trade in the tech sector. Time management is as
essential for the likes of Amazon, Facebook, and Apple as it is for General Electric,
