Speed training.

Speed Wins

Speed = options = opportunities.

Markets respond to speed because it’s always in scarce supply and for many, the limiting factor in whether or not great work comes to life. When you’ve got it, others wish they had it; when you don’t, you invest in developing it or pay the consequences.

Some forms of speed can’t be taught or coached. This is natural speed where players/ founders/ employees either have the processing power and fast twitch reflexes or they don’t. Whether or not it’s used, many people have this type of speed in one category or another.

I’d like to invest a few minutes exploring another form of speed — let’s call it nurtured speed — and how I think about developing it, specifically in the content marketing department.

At a macro level, every brand wants to be as nimble as possible while preserving high quality. If given a choice between producing the same output sooner rather than later, they’ll choose sooner 100% of the time. As well they should: time is $$. However, very few companies achieve the speed they desire, let alone deliver at the pace they claim.

The biggest reason is that the ability to move light and fast is an acquired skill. Like anything else worth learning, it requires deep personal experience, an ability to determine what’s needed (and not), knowledge of the signals worth following (and the noise worth ignoring), and an eager willingness to experiment. Meaning the inverse, heavy and slow, is the result of the opposite inclinations.

A few ideas on nurturing light and fast in content development:

1. Publish your work. Don’t keep it to yourself. The act of sharing creates an internal and external dialogue that helps dissipate fear and encourage progress. Not sharing would be like practicing forever and never competing in a game. That’s just not real. And it’s certainly not an express route to improvement.
2. Avoid using all but the best concepts more than once. Build on what you’ve done by testing new techniques and material. If at first these advances are minor, OK; they’ll eventually add up. If significant, all the better.
3. Set a calendar with real repercussions to not producing or sampling specific types of content. Say you’re going to make [x] videos over [y] period? Great…let’s see ’em. And if you don’t, establish a downside that’ll keep motivation high.
4. Create a structure and make it repeatable. Assemble a step-by-step process that guides you from one phase of a project to another. This could be how you outline, draft, refine, proofread, and monitor accountabilities. Could be online, offline, or jotted on post-its. Whatever works for you, as long as it’s with a view toward improved scalability and quality. (Hint: post-its probably won’t suffice.)
5. Take notes. Earmark what works and doesn’t. Meaning write it down and set aside time for periodic reviews. The path to unconscious competence (and speed) passes through conscious competence. You just can’t skip the conscious (i.e. deliberate) part and shouldn’t desire to.

Another quick point: there are times for operating slowly and differences between fast and rushed. Of course we all try not to rush. Thing is, the better a person is able to perform, the less rushed they feel. In other words, practice makes fast.

Time to idea, time to development, time to market: they’re all incredibly critical. And time to run. That would be now.

John Tintle is the Director of Content and Communications at Highspot, the leading sales enablement platform for content management, customer engagement, and analytics. Twitter: @highspot. Also: highspot.com.