So recently I've read the book Six Days in June: How Israel Won the 1967 Arab-Israeli War by Eric Hammel. This is something a great entrepreneur recommended to me, so I could understand the concept of speed better and not waste time. To make sure I keep practicing speed I forced myself to read the book in 3 days. I encourage you guys to read the book and divulge its golden nuggets for yourselves, I'll try to keep this post short, but there is a lot to learn.
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Tiny Israel's hope for survival lay in building the best army and attacking at a lightning fast rate.
Colonel Chaim Laskov was the head of Israel's Army and created his “precepts” or rules to win the war.
The 5 basic strategies of the Laskov committee and what I understand of them are:
1) Few against many
There were less than 1,000,000 Jews in Israel so any Arabic combination of powers they faced would leave them outnumbered so to win they would have to be as efficient as possible.
2) A War of Survival
Since the Arabs outnumbered the Jews if they did go to war Israel would get annihilated completely. Therefore they would have to strike first and move urgently.
3) A Strategy of Attrition
Since Zahal (the Israel army) couldn't outnumber the other armies and hope to kill them all they'd have to focus on crippling the oppositions war-making abilities and attack their weapons supply.
4) Geographic Pressures
Israel had a small territory and lay in a low geographical region, so it had very little hope of defending. If attacked the only hopes were speedy flanks or counters from the rear. It's only defense was offense. (The only advantage it had was the short line of supply and communication).
5) A Short War
Combining the previous precepts of low population, being outnumbered and sought to being annihilated, no geographic or territorial advantages the only answer was to win the war as fast as possible.
I could go into further details, but I won't there's just too much in this book, but in short each of the precepts translates directly into startups.
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In order to succeed all the members have to be highly trained, lightning fast at execution, amazingly organized, well communicated and attacking all fronts in a simultaneous fashion.
This means that in your startup you have to be always on the go with the best trained people who have years of experience, constantly attacking with impeccable coordination.
For Sales it could mean pitching the CEO, the VP's and Sales Managers of an organization all at the same time or same day.
For Marketing it could mean being in every channel you can get your hands on to get more conversions.
For Product Development it could mean launching a new feature every week.
For Product Relations it could mean getting an interview a week.
This philosophy of speed can be extrapolated into every phase of business. The only way Israel won the war was by moving so fast its giant opposition couldn't keep up with all of their advancements.
Many times startups talk about executing fast, but few really do it well. The only advantage we have is the element of surprise. This element of surprise goes hand in hand with speedy communication and strategy as well. If we can't execute fast enough, we fail and our large foes will fully annihilate us.
