Business consultant Poscente employs velocity as a catchall term for explaining how to thrive in our hyperstimulated society. A former Olympic speed skier, he explains how people and organizations can best equip themselves to surf the endless assault of tasks and data familiar to any office worker. To him, speed both causes and solves the ambiguity surrounding high technology and the competing demands of career and personal life. But even if speed is the answer, this book doesn’t uncover any insight that hasn’t occurred to anyone who’s ever stayed late tapping out e-mails. For case studies, the book wheels out long-suffering Eastman Kodak as an example of a Zeppelin that couldn’t keep pace with new technology. Google, meanwhile, is a Jet that upped the ante. But readers who want to learn from that savvy company would be better served by other studies than this brief sketch. Poscente dallies on the Aligned Organization and the notion that work is no longer a place—it’s a state of mind, but the result is a string of business clichés. With almost every other page left blank, Poscente’s kind enough not to demand too much of his readers’ time. But the lack of substance ensures that they’ll forget it even faster.
