Fail fast!
Move fast, break things, and learn...rinse and repeat
We've heard these classic startup axioms over the years. Founders, execs and VCs have advocated this approach for years. Billions of dollars of angel and VC money supported this leadership style, and dozens of books have been written about this approach. These books all cite examples of founders and execs who moved fast, learned and adjusted their way to a rapid rise in market share and sales.
For every such success story there are nine other largely untold stories about companies who failed. Because, either way...move fast and break things, or not...nine out ten new business ventures ultimately don’t work out.
In a startup the company and its leadership do have to move fast and decisively. But a decade or more of failed companies and wasted investment dollars have proven that while being decisive is important, being reckless is not.
I will never support accepting failure, saying it’s ok to try something knowing it may fail. Why would anyone ever step onto a playing field or go into a battle, thinking about losing? Why would anyone ever launch a company, or start a product or a marketing program, thinking that it’s ok if it doesn’t work out. It’s not ok to fail, and it’s not ok to get started until you’ve fully prepared yourself to succeed. Have a vision, have a strategy to realize that vision, and have a plan to execute on the strategy. And when you have all of that, take action.
When leading an organization or a team you must act decisively. In order to do so, you must be well-informed, seek opinions from team members and other trustworthy sources, and gather as much data as you can. All of this should be done first to the best of your ability...and all of this must be done fast. This was the true intent of “move fast, break things”.
Startups are in a race to get established - gain some customer/user traction, create awareness and raise or generate sustainable operating capital. Scale-up companies are looking to expand their market share and presence after having fought hard to secure product-market fit for their solution. They continue to operate at pace, but should now have some tail-wind momentum. Larger companies continue to have growth targets, are fighting off challengers and competition, and carry expectations no less great than at startup or scale-up companies.
The fact patterns may be different in each stage of a company’s maturity, but the pressure to perform never goes away. Thus the need for leadership to act decisively also never goes away.
Acting decisively means that once a leader has gathered enough information to formulate a course of action, they communicate that to their team and then stand-by their decision and support the team and company as the results of the decision unfold.
There may be immediate feedback or reactions that don't unfold as expected. This input must be processed and understood, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a complete change of plans is warranted. Acting decisively also means maintaining your convictions in the chosen path forward even as doubt creeps in. It also doesn’t mean that one should have an extremely rigid approach, so as to ignore overwhelming evidence that there is a flaw in the original plan. It may seem like this commentary is contradictory but in fact it’s complimentary.
Going hand-in-hand with decisiveness is flexibility and adaptability to changing circumstances. Your team must have decisiveness from their leaders and will respect firm, well thought-out action...they will expect it. They will also expect humility, and adaptability. Leadership is hard and it’s not for everyone. No one is perfect, and no one will bat 1.000. As long as actions are thought-out, communicated and decisive, a leader will be respected.
Where leaders get into trouble is when they suffer from paralysis by analysis. They overthink decisions or a course of action; they keep gathering more and more information, hoping the right answer will materialize in the extra data they have gathered; decisions end up taking much longer to reach and implement, than they should. Again the “fail fast” crowd will point to these delays as a danger that could harm the company. Too slow, opportunity missed...the opposite of too fast and reckless. As usual, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Leaders that take too long to reach a decision or aren’t firm in their actions, run the risk of losing the respect of their team. Making snap decisions on the spot, all the time, will also cost you the respect of your team and is a trap leaders can fall into; they feel making decisions on the spot portrays them as decisive to the team, when in fact they will come across as inexperienced. If you’ve hired the right team, they will know which decisions don’t require a lot of thought and which ones need time to think through and need additional data.
Acting decisively and being armed with knowledge will serve you well as a leader. It will garner you some respect from your team. Is acting decisively a sure ticket to success? Not at all!
Your decisions and the courses of action you chose for the organization have to be the correct ones, eight times out of ten. You have to be right...you have to deliver results that are in-line with expectations for the organization or team. If you under-perform and repeatedly under-deliver, someone will come along and let you know your time is up and that it’s someone else’s turn to lead. That’s life, and those are the rules of engagement in any meaningful role. The more meaning the opportunity, the greater the expectations.
All the accolades and respect will be there when your organization or team succeeds. Acting decisively is an important tool to help you get there.
Thank you for investing time in reading this post. Questions and comments are always welcome.
Shail Paliwal
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