3d Fast

[Melanie Wendelberger]

Whatis FAST.com measuring? FAST.com speed test gives you an estimate of your current Internet speed. You will generally be able to get this speed from leading Internet services, which use globally distributed servers.

Why does FAST.com focus primarily on download speed? Download speed is most relevant for people who are consuming content on the Internet, and we want FAST.com to be a very simple and fast speed test.

How are the results calculated? To calculate your Internet speed, FAST.com performs a series of downloads from and uploads to Netflix servers and calculates the maximum speed your Internet connection can provide. More details are in our blog post.

What can I do if I'm not getting the speed I pay for? If results from FAST.com and other internet speed tests (like dslreports.com or speedtest.net) often show less speed than you have paid for, you can ask your ISP about the results.

The site is secure.

The ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Fast track is a process designed to facilitate the development, and expedite the review of drugs to treat serious conditions and fill an unmet medical need. The purpose is to get important new drugs to the patient earlier. Fast Track addresses a broad range of serious conditions.

Any drug being developed to treat or prevent a condition with no current therapy obviously is directed at an unmet need. If there are available therapies, a fast track drug must show some advantage over available therapy, such as:

Rolling Review, which means that a drug company can submit completed sections of its Biologic License Application (BLA) or New Drug Application (NDA) for review by FDA, rather than waiting until every section of the NDA is completed before the entire application can be reviewed. BLA or NDA review usually does not begin until the drug company has submitted the entire application to the FDA

Fast Track designation must be requested by the drug company. The request can be initiated at any time during the drug development process. FDA will review the request and make a decision within sixty days based on whether the drug fills an unmet medical need in a serious condition.

Once a drug receives Fast Track designation, early and frequent communication between the FDA and a drug company is encouraged throughout the entire drug development and review process. The frequency of communication assures that questions and issues are resolved quickly, often leading to earlier drug approval and access by patients.

When it comes to setting goals, most managers follow a well-established set of practices. They hold one-on-one meetings with their subordinates to set goals, and then they review performance against those objectives at year end and link their appraisal to promotion and bonus decisions.3 These same managers aspire to make their goals SMART, by ensuring they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.4

When Marcel Telles took the reins at a struggling Brazilian beer-maker named Companhia Cervejaria Brahma, he had no inkling that he would help pioneer a new approach to managing goals. Prior to joining the company as CEO in 1989, Telles had been a trader, and he wanted to bring the transparency of the trading floor to the century-old brewer. He tore down walls and cubicles and created an open office where managers posted their goals and current performance for all to see.5

Aggregating these individual choices across a range of companies, we found that users made more than 90% of their goals public. The percentage of public goals, moreover, was virtually the same whether an organization was public or private, small or large, a Silicon Valley technology company, or a more traditional enterprise. To be sure, some goals should remain private (particularly those dealing with sensitive personnel decisions, legal issues, or pending acquisitions). But in the vast majority of cases, users believe the benefits of transparency outweigh the costs.

Some companies, particularly those run by engineers, insist that every key result be quantifiable. Our experience working with companies, however, suggests that relying exclusively on quantitative measures is neither necessary nor optimal. For a fast-growing startup, for example, the qualitative milestone of hiring a new chief technology officer can be every bit as important as any quantitative KPI. Among BetterWorks users, about half of key results are quantitative.

The discipline of translating goals into metrics and milestones can enhance the performance of individuals or teams in several ways. For big-picture thinkers, breaking goals into concrete tasks and metrics helps them think through the details of how to achieve their objectives. Conversely, more tactically oriented employees can link their activities and KPIs to the outcomes that matter most for the company as a whole. Working through concrete actions and metrics, moreover, helps employees understand exactly what their boss and colleagues expect from them, and decreases the odds that they will agree on broad generalities that each interprets in their own way.

Resetting goals on a quarterly basis can be useful. But it is not the only way to embed objectives in ongoing discussions. Employees at AB InBev, for example, set their targets annually, and Google, for its part, recently moved from quarterly to annual goals.16 What really matters is not whether goals are set quarterly or annually, but whether they shape the key discussions for getting work done. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, for example, meets weekly with his executive team to discuss how his team members are doing against their goals and metrics.17 Goals can also provide the framework for making difficult trade-offs regarding which initiatives to prioritize, how to allocate resources, and how to respond to requests from colleagues in other teams.

Feedback and coaching sessions provide another opportunity for managers and employees to discuss goals on an ongoing basis. Some 70% of the managers we surveyed said they want monthly updates on how they were doing against their goals. Unfortunately, less than half receive monthly feedback. Several high-profile companies, including Microsoft, IBM, and Accenture, have recently transformed their traditional performance appraisal process to incorporate ongoing discussions on how employees are doing against their goals, which keeps these objectives top of mind throughout the year.18

The temptation to play it safe when setting goals is understandable but often misguided. Recall that employees pursuing ambitious goals significantly outperform colleagues with less challenging objectives. The pioneers of FAST goals, moreover, emphasize the critical role of ambition in setting effective goals. In a new book titled Measure What Matters, Doerr discusses the value of pursuing order-of-magnitude improvements as opposed to incremental gains, supported by case studies from Google Chrome, YouTube, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.20

Ambitious goals minimize the risk that employees will sandbag by committing to overly conservative goals they are sure to achieve. The typical image of sandbagging is a sales representative setting a goal of $1 million when he is confident he could sell twice that amount. Sandbagging, however, manifests itself in more insidious ways that undermine experimentation and learning. When bonuses are tied to hitting targets, employees may opt for cost-reduction initiatives that are fully under their control, as opposed to growing sales, which depends on the actions of customers, partners, and competitors. Or they might attempt to wring incremental improvements out of existing products or business models rather than pursue a novel technology that offers a higher payoff in the long run. When the gap between the goals being set and current reality is wide, organizations need to search for creative or innovative ways to achieve their ambitious, overall objectives.21 Insisting that employees achieve 100% of their goals, in contrast, can also deter employees from the trial-and-error experimentation required to innovate.22

How can leaders inspire people to set more ambitious goals? In Silicon Valley many companies encourage employees to set goals that they are unlikely to achieve in full. Google, for example, expects employees to achieve an average of 60% to 70% of their key results. In the eyes of Google executives, asking for more would prevent employees from thinking big enough when setting their objectives.

Goals are a powerful tool to drive strategy execution. To harness their potential, leaders must move beyond the conventional wisdom of SMART goals and their entrenched practices. Instead, they need to think in terms of being FAST, by having frequent discussions about goals, setting ambitious targets, translating them into specific metrics and milestones, and making them public for everyone to see.

On September 28, 2023, Governor Newsom signed into law AB 1228, the Fast Food Restaurant Industry legislation that raises the hourly minimum wage rate for certain fast food workers to $20 effective April 1, 2024. In addition, the legislation establishes a Fast Food Council within DIR to establish an hourly minimum wage for fast food restaurant employees and develop standards, rules, and regulations for the fast food industry. Information on public meetings will be posted on this page in 2024. If you are interested in receiving email notices for future Council meetings, please subscribe here.

The Council will meet in accordance with the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act. Members of the Council may be expected to travel. Per diem and travel expenses subject to conditions and limits may be issued to members of the advisory committee.

The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) recognizes the importance of communicating effectively with individuals, including those with limited English proficiency. DIR is making an effort to provide meaningful services for individuals that speak languages other than English.

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