Speed as a Habit

image0The going cliche is move fast and break things. It's mostly true and simple enough.

... but there’s relatively little written about how to develop the institutional and employee muscle necessary to make speed a serious competitive advantage.

... speed, like exercise and eating healthy, can be habitual.

The author categorizes speed into two types: making decision and executing them.

On making decision...

WHEN a decision is made is much more important than WHAT decision is made.

On execution...

There’s a funny story about my old pal Sabih Khan, who worked in Operations at Apple when I was a product manager there. In 2008, he was meeting with Tim Cook about a production snafu in China. Tim said, “This is bad. Someone ought to get over there.” Thirty minutes went by and the conversation moved to other topics. Suddenly Tim looked back at Sabih and asked, 'Why are you still here?' Sabih left the meeting immediately, drove directly to San Francisco Airport, got on the next flight to China without even a change of clothes. But you can bet that problem was resolved fast.

And eliminate cognitive overhead. Project dependencies, boss' decisions, historical context, they all stand in the way of execution. Worse is when these executions are reversible, the time wasted isn't worth the price.

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