Rush at your own peril
How moving too fast actually harms your startup
Speed is highly valued within the startup community — and for good reason. When you’re a smaller team, you can stay agile, make decisions faster, and execute in unison. This is one of the biggest advantages that an early stage company has. But be warned. While speed is important, it often influences us to rush. If you fail to understand the difference, you will struggle to find success.
Imagine one morning that you slept past your alarm. You scramble out of bed, skip breakfast, and rush out the door, only to realize 10 minutes into your commute that you forgot your laptop and have to turn back. When you finally get to work, your mind is jumbled because it hasn’t had time to calibrate for the day ahead.
This is an example of how your body responds to urgency. The threat of being late to work causes a physiological reaction that heightens your ability to focus. In this case, getting to work as quickly as possible becomes the only objective that matters. But there’s a trade off. While in this condition, you think less clearly and are prone to making mistakes that could be avoided.
How this applies to startups
We can detect our frantic state when we sleep past an alarm, yet we often struggle to notice the signs in the context of a business. Undoubtedly, the startup grind presents frequent periods of intense stress. This can unwittingly trigger a response similar to what we experience when rushing to work. Whether investors are breathing down your back, or the team places the onus on themselves to deliver, there is a tremendous amount of pressure that must be managed. While this can motivate us, it can also lead to tunnel vision. If we let ourselves become consumed by the frenzy, we risk losing sight of the bigger picture.
Ultimately, there’s a big difference between doing things and doing the right things. To better illustrate this point, consider two archetypes: the Doer and the Learner.
The Doer
The “Doer” represents a person who rushes into execution. He responds to the threat of failure by getting to work right away, without much consideration for where he’s going. He focuses on maximizing sheer output under the misguided belief that simply by working hard and fast, he’ll get to his destination. While the intention is to work on high impact projects, time has not been invested to uncover what truly matters for the business. As a result, every idea seems like an idea that’s “worth a test”, which makes it difficult to identify what’s important. Due to a lack of direction, the path of a “Doer” is highly volatile. While his output is high, a lot of resources can end up wasted on things that don’t move the needle.
The Learner
In contrast, the “Learner” represents a person who is more calculated and deliberate with her actions. She takes time to survey the environment so that she can equip herself with useful information. While it may require more time upfront to uncover deep insights, she is able to build momentum because the areas she invests in are more likely to succeed. The path of the “Learner” still has variability, since its impossible to fully predict what will happen, but the ultimate effect is that she can travel a much shorter path to reach her goal.
Choose the shorter path
When you break it down, the time it takes to reach your destination is a factor of two variables: pace and distance. In the example above, the “Doer” needs to travel a much greater distance to reach his goal. While we often think the fastest way forward is to accelerate, figuring out a shorter path can be an equally (or more) effective solution.
Forget shortcuts.
Keep in mind that this does not mean taking shortcuts. Sometimes, it feels like you can save time by borrowing ideas, but it’s an illusion. Here’s the truth: there is no shortcut to finding success. When you rely on analogies, you’re making a flawed assumption that just because two things are superficially similar, they’re likely to share further similarities. Here are two common traps to watch out for:
The Tactic Trap
An example of this behaviour is the addiction that growth marketers have for tactics. A quick google search for the phrase “growth hacks” returns an extensive collection of blogs and articles that feed off of our desire for a quick fix. “25 surefire ways to improve conversion by 500%!” “See how this guy made millions on Snapchat!” When we’re rushing to produce results, these resources can often seem like a treasure trove of knowledge. If it’s worked for someone else, surely it will work for me too. While it can be tempting to fill your queue with supposedly proven ideas, copying others seldom leads to big wins.
The Ego Trap
Another trap we fall for is trusting our gut instincts. As we gain experience, we become overconfident and biased towards our own opinions. In an interview with The Guardian, Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, has said that the one bias he would eliminate if he had a magic wand is overconfidence. Kahneman argues that this is just an example of our brains being lazy, trying to reason by analogy instead of using the fundamentals. While we can (and should) access our experiences to more quickly recognize patterns, we can’t skip a step. Regardless of how much you’ve achieved in the past, it still requires deep, original, and deliberate thought to find the right opportunities for your business.
Take time to find the shorter path
As an industry, we have become so fixated on moving fast that we have discounted the value of good decision making. We frequently sprint into a maze, without considering if there’s a better path. Because it’s in our nature to rush, we must find ways to counter-balance this tendency. Here are a few things you can start doing today:
Leave room to think
Set aside time in your schedule to detach from the daily operations of the business and think more strategically. There is always going to be an important task you have to finish, but if you’re not careful, you can wander off course by not investing enough time figuring out where you’re going. Brian Scoudamore, founder of 1–800-GOTJUNK, has a great article on ways to do this.
Stop testing without purpose
The popular advice in our industry is to “always be testing”, but I think this encourages the wrong behaviour. The objective is not to run lots of tests; it’s to learn as fast as you can. Remember that activity does not equal progress. Sometimes, reducing the number of active tests is the right move so that you can focus on properly designing, executing, and analyzing the ones you decide are worth it.
Let research inform your work
Research is like teenage sex. Everyone says they do it, but very few companies do it well. Too often, it’s used to validate existing ideas, rather than uncovering the truth. We’ve all been guilty of finding one stat or conducting one interview just to validate an idea we were already set on doing. This isn’t proper research. Research starts with open ended questions and provides an unbiased view of your market and customer. These insights will create the foundation that your business needs to succeed. If you’re short on ideas, don’t chase the sexy tactic. Turn to research to help you figure out what matters.
Remember This
The companies that win are able to cut through the noise and identify critical levers. They achieve this by finding the right balance between aggressive execution and thoughtful planning. In the race against time, it can be very tempting to rush into work, but before doing so, carefully consider how your work contributes to your broader objectives. Finding this alignment will put you on the fastest path to success.
Let’s continue the conversation in the comments below! If you enjoyed this read, please recommend or share. Opencare is hiring in Toronto, click here to learn more or email me directly at peter@opencare.com.
