What if saying “Stop Starting and Start Finishing” was a mistake?

What if saying “Stop Starting and Start Finishing” was a mistake?

This is one of the core tenets we use in the Kanban or Flow communities, but does it work?

• ❓ How well does it land with the companies we work with?
• ❓ How well is it understood?

In particular, I often see a lot of discomfort, and resistance, to the “stop starting” part.

Why?

My expericence is that this happens because it is anti-cultural. The idea of not starting work clashes directly against deeply-held core beliefs such as “the more work we start, the more work we will deliver”. So, unconsciously, people reject the wisdom we offer.

What could be a better alternative to that statement? Here is one option:

✅ “Be Slow to Start and Fast to Finish”

Why this version?

• 🐌 We are not saying “don’t start”. We are saying “don’t be trigger-happy about starting work”.
• ⏳ Take your time and make sure that what you are starting makes sense both from a business impact hypothesis and business capacity basis.
• ⏩ When we say “start finishing” what we imply is that we want to deliver things as quickly and smoothly as possible. So, using “fast to finish” makes that more explicit.

Slow & Fast rather than Stop and Start.

What do you think? How would you refine this further? Looking forward to reading your comments.