Is Faster Always Better?

Episode #294 // “If you can create a culture that values momentum, you will almost always outperform teams that don't!”

I often talk about the need for speed. As a leader, placing a premium on forward progress is one of the most reliable tools you have to achieve execution excellence in your team.

If you can create a culture that values momentum, you will almost always outperform teams that don’t.

Teams that don’t value speed just seem to stagnate. I’ve seen lots of them over the years, and whenever that level of stagnation is present, it’s generally accompanied by other undesirable characteristics, like:

• A high level of conservatism
• A perfectionistic culture
• Low productivity
• Lack of challenge between team members
• Knowledge hoarding
• Lack of initiative and innovation
• Decision-making by consensus
• Over-indexing on process, and under-indexing on results

That’s why I was interested to read an article a little while back in the Wall Street Journal, which was titled, Why Bosses Should Tell Employees to Slow Down More Often.

It led me to wonder if there’s a case for deliberately slowing the tempo of the team, and under what circumstances that might make sense?

In this episode, I share some of my experiences on the virtues of speed, momentum, and forward progress. I take a good look at the findings of the WSJ article. And I offer my suggestions for the areas where I think speed is essential, and where it might be better to tell your team to back off and cool their jets.

Source Material:

Wall Street Journal article:

Why Bosses Should Tell Employees to Slow Down More Often

The Guardian article:

Sacking, revolt, return: how crisis at OpenAI over Sam Altman unfolded

Asana article:

What is Agile Methodology?

London Business School study:

The motivation of mission statements: How regulatory mode influences workplace discrimination

No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast:

Ep.266: What the Best CEOs Do

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