Wiring the Winning Organization: The Hidden Management System Behind Extraordinary Performance

The number one predictor of organizational success isn’t technology, resources, or even talent—it’s how fast you can solve problems.

In a recent presentation at Prodacity 2025, Steve Spear—coauthor of Wiring the Winning Organization and longtime student of high-performing organizations—shared a startling discovery that challenges everything we think we know about competitive advantage. His research spanning Toyota production plants, NASA missions, Navy shipyards, and technology giants reveals that when organizations have the same resources, technology, and constraints, the winners are distinguished by one thing: their ability to identify and solve problems at high velocity.

The Half-In, Twice-Out Discovery That Changes Everything

Spear’s journey began in the late 1980s when fellow MIT graduate student John Krafcik studied all 186 final assembly plants worldwide. What he found was remarkable: while 181 plants required roughly the same inputs to produce the same outputs, five plants achieved something extraordinary—with half the people, half the physical space, and half the capital equipment, they produced twice the output. This “half in, twice out” performance was all achieved by Toyota plants.

But the advantage was even more profound than the “number four” suggests. These plants didn’t just double productivity—they achieved:

• Higher initial quality by hundreds and thousands fewer defects
• Better durability in their finished products
• Greater agility switching between models in half the time

This wasn’t about being Japanese or making cars. The same pattern emerged across industries and continents: Nokia versus Apple, Yahoo versus Google, organizations before and after transformation. The only variable that consistently explained extraordinary performance was the management system.

Redefining Leadership: From Hero to Steward

What separates winning organizations from the rest isn’t visionary leadership in the traditional sense—it’s leaders who understand their fundamental role differently. When Spear visited Toyota’s San Antonio plant, he asked the new site president about her legacy goals. Her response was illuminating:

“Legacy? I’m a steward. I am temporarily responsible for the management system that allows all these thousands of people’s individual efforts to come together in harmony every day. I just want to make sure when I leave, this system has a better shine than when I found it.”

This stewardship mindset extends to a core paranoia about organizational capability. As the Toyota executive explained, “Because of the number of problems we have, I’ve got to make sure we have a lot of good problem solvers. That’s my concern, that’s my paranoia. Are we developing people everywhere, all the time, to be wickedly good problem solvers?”

The Social Circuitry Problem

Organizations excel at engineering technical systems—the machines, software, and instrumentation that act on objects. But Spear identifies a critical blind spot: the “social circuitry overlay” of processes and procedures that determine whether individual genius translates into collective success.

Most work can’t be done unless we harmonize individual effort into collective action. It’s the processes, procedures, routines, and norms that determine whether we create conditions for people to give fullest expression to their ingenuity, creativity, and problem-solving skill—what Spear and co-author Gene Kim explore extensively in Wiring the Winning Organization.

Too often, organizations inadvertently create what Spear calls the “danger zone”—conditions that make effective problem-solving nearly impossible:

• Time pressure that forces reactive responses instead of thoughtful solutions
• High stakes that make experimentation too risky
• Complexity that overwhelms individual cognitive capacity
• Isolation that prevents learning from others’ experiences

Three Mechanisms for Escaping the Danger Zone

Spear outlines three key mechanisms that winning organizations use to create optimal problem-solving conditions:

1. Slowification: Taking Control of Time

Our brains can do things very quickly, but only things that are already muscle memory. When you’re triggered in an unfamiliar situation, you’re going to behave very badly. Leaders must engineer situations where people have time for deliberation, repetition, contemplation, and feedback processing.

2. Simplification: Breaking Down Complexity

Taking really big problems and breaking them down into smaller pieces makes the pieces manageable even if the whole is not. Spear uses NASA’s Apollo program as the perfect example—Neil Armstrong’s “small step” was literally small, building on Apollo 10’s descent to 47,000 feet, which built on Apollo 9’s orbital rendezvous testing, and so forth.

3. Amplification: Making Problems Visible

The culture must not only allow but also encourage people closest to the work to identify and escalate problems early. A colleague from the naval reactors program spent 35 years “trying to see little problems before they have a chance to become big ones.”

Democracy in Action: Eliminating “People at the Bottom”

In his presentation, Spear passionately argues against hierarchical thinking that relegates frontline workers to “the bottom of the organization.” “We have documents that say we hold these truths to be self-evident—that all are created equal. But then we talk about ‘people at the bottom of the organization.’ Pick one—they’re mutually incompatible ideas.”

In a powerful Navy shipyard example, a machinist named Emory was given permission to refuse work unless conditions were perfect for uninterrupted completion. When problems arose, senior leaders responded immediately, breaking down silos and creating the support systems she needed. The result was giving frontline workers voice to complain when situations were imperfect, with leadership responding in non-bureaucratic fashion by creating connectivity across silos.

The Bottom Line

Organizations that consistently outperform their peers share one characteristic: they’ve engineered management systems that create optimal conditions for collective problem-solving. They’ve moved beyond heroic leadership models to stewardship approaches that develop problem-solving capability everywhere, all the time.

The competitive advantage isn’t just about having smart people—it’s about creating conditions where those smart people can solve hard problems together at high velocity. If you’re not solving problems at high velocity, you’re losing.

In an era where every organization faces unprecedented complexity and change, the winners will be those that wire their organizations for continuous problem-solving excellence. The question isn’t whether your people are capable—it’s whether your management system creates the conditions for their capabilities to flourish.

Learn more about these concepts in “Wiring the Winning Organization” by Gene Kim and Steve Spear, and watch the full Prodacity 2025 presentation for additional insights.

Steve Spear is Principal at HVE LLC, Founder of See to Solve, and co-author of “Wiring the Winning Organization.” His research on high-velocity learning and problem-solving leadership has influenced organizations from Toyota to NASA to the U.S. Navy.

- About The Authors

Leah Brown

Managing Editor at IT Revolution working on publishing books and guidance papers for the modern business leader. I also oversee the production of the IT Revolution blog, combining the best of responsible, human-centered content with the assistance of AI tools.

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