It is easy to go slow. It is easy to bide your time hoping that someone else will do the actual work. Things feel safer when you’re moving slowly. It’s harder to move fast, but moving fast will make the difference between startup success or startup failure.
Why?
Startups are always in a state of running out of money. A startup that moves slowly will never finish the product or close the next deal in time. At some point the clock will strike 12 and the cash will run out…
Feeling busy and moving slowly are not mutually exclusive. You can work long hours, spend chunks of your day in meetings, ignore your family and friends, and still not get anywhere.
To ensure that you’re not mistaking busyness and speed, you have to build an obsession with speed — with getting things done.
When you’re obsessed with speed:
You dream about work and wake up thinking about how to get the product finished or the sale closed.
You’re constantly chasing your team asking them for the mockups, or checking whether they’ve have sent the proposal or not (and when they say no you have to take three deep breaths ensure sure that you don’t say something you’ll one day regret or will cause you to end up in the CCMA).
You fight the urges to micro-manage slow employees.
You frustrate your suppliers.
Your lunch breaks are less about food and more about progress.
You often find yourself running back to your desk for no reason.
You feel that planning meetings are eating you away from the inside.
If you do these things then it’s safe to say that you’re a speed freak. If you’re not, you’re slowly killing your startup.
Fortunately… it’s never too late to change.