As someone who’s been in business for many years, I can positively affirm that with every increasing year, everything is moving faster. Email has almost entirely replaced mail for the communication of timely messages. Many executives can remember when a day’s mail consisted of 10 or 15 letters. Contrast that with the average manager’s 125 messages received and sent every day. For many businesses, speed is a key strategic advantage. Organizations that are first to the market with an innovation can generate significant profits and market advantage. But for an organization to move quickly, leaders at all levels need to be able to pick up the pace.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article we analyzed multi-rater feedback evaluations on over 50,000 leaders to evaluate the impact speed had on how leaders were evaluated overall. To do this we created a speed index comprised of items that measured a leader’s ability to do the following:
- spot problems or trends early,
- quickly respond to problems
- quickly make needed changes
Leaders who were rated in the top quartile on the speed index were rated substantially higher in overall leadership skills. Those in the top quartile were rated at 83%, on average, while those below the top quartile ranked at 40%. (If you would like to evaluate your own pace and see how you compared to our subjects you can take our Pace Assessment here.)
How can leaders improve speed?
What enables a leader to move with speed? The obvious knee jerk reaction to this question is simply, “just move faster.” Pick up the pace. Don’t procrastinate completion of a project or making a decision.. Yet, most leaders can think of situations where they tried to move faster but found that it just did not work.
To answer this question we analyzed our 360 degree feedback data to see if we could find clues about the leaders who are best at seeing needs for change, making changes and responding quickly to problems. We analyzed the results from more than 700,000 colleagues who rated their leaders on the abilities that contribute to increase their speed at getting things done.
Here are the top five responses, listed in descending order. You should see quickly these are not the obvious “move faster” solutions. The leader’s speed is not driven only by personal pace, but also rests on the subordinate’s focus, effort and tempo.
- Build the trust others have in your ability to use good judgment and make effective decisions. Without trust, colleagues oppose moving fast. If you are new to a role and others don’t know you well enough to trust your judgment, you need to explain the analysis you did to make your decision. That builds trust. Share your decision with a person who has the trust of others and enlist their support for your decision. When people lack trust in their leader, their inclination is to move cautiously (or to not to move at all).
- Provide absolute clarity about strategy and vision. This substantially increases speed. It’s not hard to move fast when everyone is clear about where you are going and equally as important, where you are not going. It is always wise to slow down when driving at night on a winding, narrow road. You have no visibility. That principle applies to an organization being asked to make rapid change. The comfortable speed in moving forward is defined by the clarity of the forward vision. No rational person wants to drive recklessly. For many people that is what a hazy strategy creates, they can only see as far as the illumination of their headlights. They can only see as far ahead as the illumination of their headlights. It just as important to understand where you are not going. Joy rides with no clear destination like a waste of time to many people, and can also make it easy to get hopelessly lost. Clear vision and direction makes it easier to act with speed and avoid costly detours.
- Demonstrate personal courage. Acting with speed often feels like it brings more risk. The person looking to avoid added personal exposure will be inclined to move slowly. It takes a great deal of courage to move faster and to ask others to move swiftly with you.
- Have or assemble world-class expertise and knowledge. One of the things that slows people down is the lack of information or knowledge. When people lack expertise are prone to stop and do their homework. Lacking knowledge leaves a person in uncharted waters where their inclination is to be slow and careful. Having expertise and knowledge allows people to identify issues they have seen before but also anticipate issues or problems.
- Set stretch goals. An easy goal encourages a leisurely pace. There is no need to hurry. Stretch goals reinforce the need for speed. They scrape the barnacles off the hull of the boat. They encourage people to get on with their work rather than ponder. It is always amazing how a stretch goal can get people to accomplished goals that they never thought were possible to achieve. Most people underestimate their capacity to achieve dramatic results.
We don’t need to do everything faster, but for many activities speed can significantly improve the effectiveness and motivation of individuals. It is interesting how often our pace impacts our attitude. Slow is usually boring while fast is generally much more interesting. Think about people you have worked with who had a tendency to move quickly, and keep things going at a fast pace. Compare them to others who were more ponderous and overly cautious. Which leader did you enjoy working with most?
