Tag: speed

• Speed outweighs all else

  Rapid and high-volume decision making are fundamental to real estate development.

  In fact, it’s hard to think of anything being more important when it comes to executing on a project. This is not to say that being thoughtful and doing remarkable work aren’t important. You, of course, need to do those things as well. But it is to say that the benefits of moving as fast as you possibly can usually outweigh all else.

  What this means is that any decision is often far better than no decision. Because no decision can grind everything to a halt. You need to maintain momentum and the way to do that is to make a lot of high-quality decisions.

  As someone who was originally trained as an architect, this is something that I had to learn in the workplace. Because in architecture school, you’re basically taught to work on your projects for as long as humanly possible and then, when you’re done, you work on them some more. They’ll never be good enough and you certainly haven’t spent enough time “working in studio”.

  But in practice, you need to go. I would like to once again reiterate that this is not a license to do crappy work. I think the way to think about this is that speed and excellence reinforce each other. Our team always strives to do exceptional and remarkable work. And one of the ways to actually do that is by focusing on speed.

  2023.04.12

• Move fast and…

  

  I like this article – called Speed as a Habit – by Dave Girouard, CEO of the personal finance startup Upstart. It’s all about the importance of speed in business. Speed wins.

  “When you think about it, all business activity really comes down to two simple things: Making decisions and executing on decisions. Your success depends on your ability to develop speed as a habit in both.”

  What makes this topic so interesting is that, for a number of reasons, speed has a tendency to get sacrificed. It might be because the plan isn’t yet perfect or because there’s a belief that Y can’t happen until X is complete. 

  Perhaps it’s because the value of speed is harder to measure than the value of “perfection.”

  I particularly like the notion that you know you’re going fast enough when there’s a bit of discomfort and you’re feeling stretched, but not overstretched in an unsustainable way. Here’s another excerpt from Dave’s article:

  “While I was at Google, Larry Page was extremely good at forcing decisions so fast that people were worried the team was about to drive the car off a cliff. He’d push it as far as he could go without people crossing that line of discomfort. It was just his fundamental nature to ask, “Why not? Why can’t we do it faster than this?” and then wait to see if people started screaming. He really rallied everyone around this theory that fast decisions, unless they’re fatal, are always better.”

  A big part of this, I find, is momentum. An object at rest stays at rest. But an object in motion stays in motion. Remember this law? In this context, it is decisions that power motion and help to build and sustain momentum.

  Of course, the ideal outcome is both lightning fast and high quality decisions.

  The title of this post is homage to Facebook’s original corporate motto: “Move fast and break things.” This slogan was later adjusted to “Move fast with stable infrastructure”, which I think demonstrates our constant struggle between speed and quality.

  2017.01.21

• Speed, price, and quality

  

  “Project-triangle” by Cosmocatalano – Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

  When I was in business school, one of my friends – who runs his own agency – explained to me the Project Triangle and the “pick any two” philosophy. 

  Whether you’re building a building or building a mobile app, projects can be typically broken down in terms of 3 constraints: speed, price, and quality. The “pick any two” philosophy is that – because these dimensions are interrelated – you can only really get 2 of these dimensions at any one time.

  So for example:

  • If you want a project done really quickly and you want it to be high quality, then it’s not going to be cheap. It’s going to be expensive.

  • If you want something done really quickly and you want it at the lowest price possible, then it’s not going to be high quality. It’s going to be low quality.

  • Finally, if you want something high quality and you want it done cheaply, then it’s not going to be done quickly. You might get it done, but it will be deprioritized by whoever is doing it.

  Few things in life are truly black and white, but I really like this framework. It acknowledges the fact that something has to give. It’s unsustainable to think you can always get super fast, high quality work at rock bottom prices.

  2015.04.04