Bill Canady distinguishes going fast from hurrying: fast means delivering value quickly, while hurrying is reckless guesswork that wastes effort and risks failure. The middle path maintains rapid delivery without exposing your team to unnecessary risk.
One of the things I want to talk about today is the, how do you go fast but not hurry? One of the favorite things that we see all the time, or one of the most common things that we see all the time, is we need to be agile. We need to move quickly. We need to go put points on the board, but we want to do it thoughtfully. In order to do this, we wind up having to have 2 competing thoughts in our head. The first is, yes, I need to go fast, but I don't want to be reckless. I don't want to hurry. And hurrying in this situation means guessing, placing bets on outrunning the inevitable wreck that will come just behind. Folks do it all the time, but it's terribly risky. Remember, as you're sitting there and you're making your decisions, you have to take and find the path between going fast and delivering it and outrunning your competition, taking care of your team, while at the same time not hurrying, right? Putting yourself and everyone at risk there, needlessly wasting resources you have.
