Slowing Down

I recently read an excerpt from the book "Wiring Winning Organizations" on the virtues of slowing down. Having been part of multiple technology shifts at big tech in the past two decades, the concept resonated a lot with me. I wanted to share a few thoughts on the topic.

Image courtesy - “Wiring the Winning Organization” by Gene Kim and Steven Spear

Historically, at every big inflection point, technology tends to accelerate to get to the new normal. In 2023, with AI exploding onto mainstream after steadily building up over the past few years, things are moving at breakneck pace. There is "progress" and "innovation" almost every week. For startups and even big tech, there is a lot of pressure to show rapid progress. In the process, there is also an incentive to take shortcuts, to skip steps and not iterate on the core value proposition. And this can have negative impact both in the near and long term.

Slowing down will help move faster

Building great products requires significant upfront investment to find early product market fit. Once that is achieved, it requires continuous refinement to sustain and grow the audience. Even with PMF established, there is often a desire to maintain the same pace as pre-PMF. Instead of slowing down and identifying key areas of focus that will drive retention and promote stickiness, there is an acceleration to drive more features to grow even faster. While this is admirable, it ends up burning out the team and impacting the quality of output. This puts the very hard earned PMF at risk.

Choosing vs. Deciding

The other challenge when teams operate at a rapid pace is in decision making. When something is always around the corner, teams end up choosing an option due to lack of time to assess and make a durable decision. The impact of making choices versus decisions is not often felt until it is too late to unwind them. By slowing down, there is an opportunity to iterate, experiment, gather data and make the right decision.

In a dynamic environment, getting to product market fit requires agility and the flexibility to quickly pivot when the circumstances demand it. But the journey from 0->1 is very different from 1->100. Pacing the work and calibrating periodically will be critical for both the sanity of the team and the long term success of the product.