Why Going Faster Can Make You Slower
I tweaked my back playing tennis last week, and now I’m dealing with back spasms that are going to keep me off the court for a while. The frustrating part is I know exactly what I did wrong; I didn’t warm up enough to prepare my muscles for what I was about to ask them to do.
I wanted to get to the playing part, so I shortchanged the preparation. I probably saved a few minutes up front and may lose a few weeks because of it.
The same idea applies to strategy execution
When researching The Strategy Trap, the #1 piece of advice I heard from operators who successfully brought strategies to life was, “you have to slow down to speed up.”
If you don’t prepare your company for the changes a strategy brings, that strategy is almost certain to fail.
When I say that to people, though, I often get pushback. They say, “We can’t afford to slow down.” I get it. The world moves fast, and you need to move fast to keep up. But “slow down to speed up” doesn’t mean go slow. It means using some time up front to prep the team with what they’ll need to go fast as they implement.
A new strategy puts a new load on an organization. You’re asking people to take on different work, make different decisions, and often stop doing things they’ve been doing for years. If you haven’t prepared for that load, something is likely to break.
Restaurant kitchens understand the importance of preparation. Before dinner service starts, cooks do their mise en place (French for “everything in its place”). They prep what they’ll need and set their stations so the line can move fast once the tickets start printing.
Great strategy execution has its own version of mise en place.
The prep doesn’t need to be complicated, but it takes deliberate focus. This isn't something you can knock out between your other meetings. If you get the right people together and actually dedicate the time, you can move through these in just a few days. When I run this with a team as a structured, focused offsite, we get through all of it in less than a week, as long as the group commits to the work instead of treating it like one more meeting on the calendar.
Just getting clear on these makes a world of difference:
Why. What’s driving this new direction and the context behind it, so the team isn’t guessing at the reason.
Objectives. A few—not a dozen—clear objectives you’re trying to achieve.
Key results. The measures that tell you whether you successfully achieved each objective.
Guiding principles. The handful of rules that let people make decisions without checking with you first.
Constraints. What’s actually limited—budget, timeline, headcount, etc.—so people don’t waste time proposing a plan that breaks a boundary that can’t move.
Assumptions. This is a big one. Get out whatever’s in your head that hasn’t made it into anyone else’s, written down so the team’s using your thinking instead of guessing at it.
Capacity. What are you stopping, delaying, or deprioritizing so people actually have room to do the work?
Some of these are close to fill-in-the-blank. Others take serious focus—objectives especially—since narrowing down to a few things almost always means telling someone their idea doesn't make the cut this round. But it doesn’t need weeks. It needs discipline, the right people in the room, and a dedicated block of time set aside without distractions.
This is why I think execution starts earlier than many people think it does. Writing the strategy is part of execution. So is pressure-testing it, getting people aligned, making trade-offs, and creating room to work on it.
If you don’t do that work up front, you’ll likely pay for it later with multiple clarity meetings, rounds of rework, or changes in direction that trace directly back to assumptions that weren’t clearly stated.
Speed comes from reducing friction.
When you reduce unanswered questions, unnecessary approvals, and competing priorities, you gain a lot of speed. When you have fewer surprises that really weren’t surprises, less work has to get done twice.
In the end, it’s really just sequencing.
Use that initial burst of speed on getting the foundation right so the team can hit the ground running with confidence.
I saved a few minutes by not warming up enough. I may lose a few weeks because of it.
Don’t let that happen in your organization. Take some time to warm your team up for the changes ahead so they’re ready to move fast while they implement.
