How can an elephant's predictability inform a multinational company? What can a cheetah teach a business about speed? Taking cues from the animal kingdom can help companies adopt a systematic approach to strengthening their performance chain. The answers become as clear -- and impressive -- as an African night sky. "ROAR: Strengthening business performance through speed, predictability, flexibility, and leverage" is a clever, thought-provoking new business book by Chris LaVictoire Mahai, co-owner and managing partner at Saint Paul-based global strategy and operational change firm Aveus, that uses the animal kingdom as a metaphor for building peak performance. "ROAR" features interviews with senior executives at organizations including US Bank, Red Mango, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the San Diego Zoo and others to explore what drives peak performance against the customer problem an organization has chosen to solve. The approach outlined in "ROAR" - seeing the whole performance chain through the lenses of speed, flexibility, predictability and leverage, and tying better operating performance to better customer outcomes - has been instrumental in helping organizations of all sizes from global giants to family-owned businesses and start-ups drive world-class performance.