Going Slow to Go Fast – Master this Principle and You Master Everything

What do job seekers, sales professionals, athletes, managers, HR professionals, accountants, physicians, and health coaches all have in common? To be really, really effective at what they do, they must adeptly manage their actions in response to the speed demands of their jobs. Today’s society seems to press everyone for more speed to get things done faster. Masters of the Go Slow to Go Fast Principle have learned that the only way they can ever successfully sustain speed and quality in executing their job is through intentionally planning their “go slow time.”

• Can the physician perform emergency surgery to save a life if he or she didn’t first put in hours of “go slow” work studying procedures, practicing techniques, and learning to anticipate outcomes?
• Can the job seeker be effective in landing his or her dream job if he or she never invested many hours of “go slow” work by relentlessly developing an effective network?
• Can an executive have the trust and willing followership needed to launch a new venture without having spent hours of “Go Slow” time, developing relationships while learning the skills and limitations of the team charged with making it happen?

A Go Slow to Go Fast Case Study: Un-stalling a Promising Executive Career

Take the situation faced by Christina Finch*, a brilliant logistics executive working for a multinational manufacturer. CEO Bill Smith hired Christina because of her unique set of talents and lightning-fast mind. She had an impressive track record of rapidly identifying business issues, their causes and organizational impact, and always had outside-the-box approaches for remedying them. The rub was that most of the people who worked with her felt intimidated by how she seemingly eviscerated their ideas in departmental meetings, or her tendency to publically suggest ways to “fix” problem areas in their departments. While Christina saw her role as “helping to speed things along,” her peers saw her as both creative in her ideas but an impediment in her approach, so they complained to Bill Smith.

Bill and Christina met to discuss things, and Christina was not at all surprised to learn she was frustrating her co-workers. She said the same thing had happened in previous positions she held. She told Bill how discouraged she was whenever she saw the company taking too long to address an issue.

While Bill loved the critical thinking Christina brought to the company, he wasn’t sure that the drama that seemed to follow her was worth it.

How Christina Went Slow

Christina was urged by her coach to take the following “Go Slow” actions over the next 90 days:

How Christina Got to Go Very Fast

Once she had re-established trust and built a solid professional relationship with her peers, her peers began seeking her input and feedback on the topics they planned to bring up in the next meeting. Likewise, she began vetting her ideas with them. Because of this pre-meeting collaboration, when it came time to discuss ideas in the meetings, an idea’s discussion and adoption were often completed in the same session.

Bottom line result: within six months Christina’s peers had all shared examples with the CEO of how Christina helped them to be more effective with their ideas. Both the speed and quality of decision making improved.

Are there areas of your career where you could apply the Go Slow to Go Fast Principle?

* While the situation described is a real example of Go Slow to Go Fast, Christina Finch is not the executive’s real name.