On Moving Fast
Several great companies have modeled the importance of moving quickly, and the fact that it’s possible to execute much faster than usually seems possible.
Pareto Improvements
Sometimes executing a plan faster is a Pareto improvement: it’s a gain with no downsides. This is much like a meeting that could have been an email. Finding these cases can be as simple as just asking the question, “can we do this faster?” and as hard as convincing many stubborn people that a new way of doing things is worth trying.
Because these Pareto-improvement cases are surprisingly common, it’s important for everyone to keep asking that question.
“Every hour counts” is a good motto, and as a part of company culture, everyone should feel comfortable exiting meetings where they no longer feel they benefit or contribute, and terminating interviews that clearly aren’t going anywhere (to give two examples).
Paying the Piper
Much of the time, executing faster means identifying limiting assumptions about the costs of going faster, and then deciding that those costs are worth paying.
This is often the case in software startups, where launching faster inevitably means a less aesthetic product with fewer features and worse UX. Launching earlier feels impossible - until everyone decides to pay the price.
You might also phrase this as “What costs do I risk paying?” For instance, if you send the email faster, without brooding over it, you might impress someone less. How large is that risk, and how large is that cost? Is this choice reversible?
Most bad choices can be fixed, and are thus reversible. These decisions should be taken faster.
As you decide to launch a smaller or inferior version of your full vision, you have to identify the most important features or steps to take. Scaling back thus forces greater efficiency, and focusing on the highest-payoff steps usually leads to moving faster.
Staying Nimble
Moving fast also means eschewing unnecessary process. Any organization needs to add communications and process infrastructure as it scales - it’s the bones of the organization - and this slows down decision-making. Sometimes startups solve this by having the founders make almost all decisions, but eventually this becomes a bottleneck (and it’s frustrating to ambitious team members).
It’s possible to empower frontline team members to simply make decisions, to a much greater degree than usually practiced, if you pay the price of dealing with the occasional bad decision, and making judgment calls about who can be trusted with more power.
Process often inappropriately substitutes for accountability.
Moving up the Zone
Going faster usually also means working harder. However, telling people to work faster or longer is not simply a matter of piling on emotional pressure, and that is an unethical and low-information approach. At times in a startup, it’s appropriate to ask for longer work hours, and these can be times of unity and inspiration, but it’s also important to remember that can come at a cost.
You risk burnout and the deterioration of personal lives, which have personal and professional effects. Life debt or mental health debt can sometimes be payed down later (for instance, taking a week off as a company after a big push), but not always. It’s critical to take a long-term view, which tends to lead to more ethical actions.
Nevertheless, there is a zone between underworking and overworking, and staying near the top of that zone makes a huge difference, although it is often uncomfortable.
When to Move More Slowly
Context always determines the right tradeoffs to make. In some situations focusing on quality over speed is the right move.
Some tasks are a “no-fail mission,” where almost any amount of time is worth paying if it increases the probability of success. And many inefficiencies lead to higher quality decision-making in unclear ways, such as allowing interdisciplinary teams to sit in on each other’s meetings to improve general situation awareness.