Speed without direction gets you nowhere

Do you care about velocity, or just speed?

Companies are in business to create a new world that doesn’t exist yet. A world where their vision has come to life.

In order to achieve their vision, companies set goals they want to achieve on the path to the future.

Companies are also in competition with each other. A company can’t afford to be slow, or their vision will never be realized; someone else will beat them to it.

That’s why getting to your destination quickly in business is a competitive differentiator.

It’s no wonder then that companies, and their leaders, care so much about speed. The speed is toward their goals and vision.

But is something lost when the focus is just on speed?

What’s wrong with focusing on speed?

When the focus is solely on speed, the original implication of toward a goal and vision gets lost, but it’s that second piece that’s really important. Speed needs to be in a direction.

Speed in a direction is called velocity. It’s velocity that’s actually important.

To illustrate this point with a silly example, let’s say your friend needs to pick you up so you can both go to the hot sauce festival together. They’re supposed to pick you up at 8:00 AM, but it’s now two minutes past that and they’re nowhere to be found.

You call them to see what’s up. They respond, “Don’t worry, I’m going 65 mph. I’ll be there soon!”

Unfortunately, they don’t mention that they’re accidentally driving in the opposite direction of your house. Their speed was fine. Their velocity was not.

And now you’re going to miss the hot sauce festival!

Practical models of high speed and low velocity

There are three models I’ve seen in business where speed is high, but velocity (meaning, in the direction of their goal) is low.

Spinning

Imagine someone spinning in a circle. They’re going at a high speed - and getting dizzy - but they’re going nowhere. This can happen, for example, when someone is struggling to get started on a project. They’re going around in circles trying to figure out how to make progress. When they end their day they’re exhausted from working so hard, but they’ve made almost no progress toward the goal. High speed, low velocity.

Rework / Wrong

I’ve seen teams work really hard to get somewhere, but when they finally present or test their work, it turns out they’re wrong and have to start all over again. They went fast, but ultimately made no progress toward their end goal; they’re right back where they started. High speed, low velocity.

Wrong Direction

The last model is where a team works hard to get to a destination, and succeeds. Yay!

Wait. Yay?

Yes, in the short term.

But when you zoom out to the big picture, the team was working in the wrong direction. They’re like the friend who didn’t pick you up for the hot sauce festival. They’re quickly heading out of town. High speed, negative velocity!

What are the implications of focusing too much on speed?

Teams are trying to solve problems, their boss (possibly you 🙂) are asking them to move faster. There are deadlines to hit. Customer demands to meet. Quarterly earning to achieve. Faster. Faster. Faster!

When this happens the team gets tunnel vision. They focus on speed to the detriment of other things they should care about, like quality, architecture, responding to changes in the environment, etc. The sensation of speed becomes the focus, and things that detract from the the feeling of speed get pushed aside.

This can look like some of the following:

• Suppressing friction in meetings. “Let’s take that offline.” “Let’s focus on this right now.”
• Ignoring alternative perspectives.
• Lack of debate in meetings. People go along to get along.
• Losing the big picture. The team project manages the short term deliverable, losing sight of the longer-term goal of the work.
• Accepting tech debt or poor architecture.

What should a leader do instead?

Leaders should stay conscious of the big picture while executing on short term deliverables. It’s like in swimming; you put your head down for a few strokes and then pick your head up to make sure you’re on track.

As a leader you can:

• Gather alternative perspectives. Don’t forget to draw out those introverts who tend to stay more quiet.
• Review the architecture and tradeoffs the team is making.
• Review the big picture and the goals you’re driving toward. Verify that the short-term work still supports it.
• Encourage dissent. Debate the path you’re on. Someone might see an option you don’t.

Right now you’re probably thinking something like, “How can I think big picture, discuss tradeoffs, and debate without sacrificing too much speed?” Great question!

Leadership is gray and nuanced, which is part of what makes it fun. If all you did was debate and discuss, that’s another form of low velocity. Yes, you’re getting smarter and building a map, but you’re not actually making forward progress. You have to balance the divergent thinking (picking your head up in swimming) and convergent tasks (performing the swimming strokes).

There are a couple of techniques and ideas I’ve found helpful.

Focus - If you’ve got more than three priorities you’re probably spread so thin you don’t have the time to engage well with any one of them. Focus is the number one thing you can do to help your overall velocity! Seriously, no one likes to reduce their active initiatives, but it’s a high leverage activity if you can.

Frequent Check-Ins - The default cadence in bigger companies is to meet once a week since that’s typically the cadence of recurring meetings. Break that! Don’t wait a week; get an update tomorrow or in two days. This minimizes the cost of things like “rework” because the review cycles are shorter.

Leaders set the pace. People sometimes ask to get back to me in a week, and I ask, why not tomorrow or the next day? Start compressing cycle times. We can move so much quicker if we just change the mindset. Once the cadence changes, everybody moves quicker, and new energy and urgency will be everywhere. Good performers crave a culture of energy.

— Frank Slootman in “Amp It Up”

Parallelize - You’ve got to see the forest and the trees. Very tactically, make sure you’ve got your team set up to be able to put sufficient effort behind all levels of work - often in the form of a having a program manager work on the big picture coordination, and a project manager ensuring smaller pieces of work are moving forward.

When might you care only about speed?

There are a few times when pure speed is important that are worth mentioning.

High Uncertainty - In a VUCA environment, the only way out is through. You’ve just got to start doing things. This builds the map of the territory and develops the business acumen in you and the team. Later you’ll start to pick your head up and care about bigger picture and velocity, but in the beginning, just get moving.

No Vision - There are times when you aren’t really sure where you want to be, but you know it isn’t where you are now. Again, just move. Don’t worry about all the debate and analysis, just build momentum away from where you are now - you can change directions later.

Short Term Deadline - There are times when you literally have something due in short order, like an hour or the next day. Just work your booty off and get it done. You can zoom out later.

Bringing It All Together

Companies need velocity, which is speed in a direction, in order to hit their goals and achieve their vision.

But leaders and companies can care so much about the speed part of the equation, a few bad models emerge. Spinning (going around in circles). Rework (starting over again). Wrong Direction (accidentally going away from the goal).

A few other issues can be observed when leaders focus too much on speed; suppressing friction and debate, ignoring architecture, and losing the big picture.

Leaders need to find balance with other activities, like encouraging dissent, gathering alternative perspectives, and keeping their eye on the big picture.

Leaders can do this by focusing on the few key initiatives/goals that really matter. Pair this with frequent check-ins and parallelizing coverage of the big picture and short-term coordination.

Call to Action

Have you experienced any of the spinning/rework/wrong direction failures in your work? Are you a little over-indexed on speed and not thinking as much of overall velocity?

If so, see where you can improve focus, increase the frequency of check-ins, and parallelize your coverage.

I’ll leave you with a quote about Churchill taking over from Chamberlain early in WWII. The quote is about speed, but note that it was in service of their goal of winning the war - so truly high velocity. Can you unlock two more gears in your business?

A new electricity surged through Whitehall. Subdued corridors awoke. “It was as though the machine had overnight acquired one or two new gears, capable of far higher speeds than had ever before been thought possible,” wrote Edward Bridges, secretary to the War Cabinet. This new energy, unfamiliar and disconcerting, coursed through all bureaucratic strata, from the lowest secretary to the most senior minister. The effect within No. 10 was galvanic. Under Chamberlain, even the advent of war had not altered the pace of work, according to John Colville; but Churchill was a dynamo. To Colville’s astonishment, “respectable civil servants were actually to be seen running along the corridors.” For Colville and his fellow members of Churchill’s private secretariat, the workload increased to hitherto unimagined levels.

— Erik Larson in “The Splendid and the Vile”

Kevin