Leadership is Speedership

Terrible expression, but not a terrible idea

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A friend shared an expression with me the other day that I hadn’t heard before: “leadership is speedership.”

That’s stupid, I responded. What the f**k does it even mean?

Turns out, the expression stems from this quote from Lee Iacocca …

The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

… which is 100% true. And so incredibly important to consider as a leader.

I’ve seen many a team get mired down—unable to move forward on an initiative or implement a change—because their boss slows things down.

They need more information. They want all options identified, and wish to ponder each and every one of them … carefully (aka, slowly). They cannot make a decision.

One of the things I love about Amazon is the company’s emphasis on speed, embodied in our Bias for Action leadership principle:

As Amazonian leaders, we strive to make high-velocity decisions—leveraging concepts like one-way and two-way door decisions—to ensure we are not the impediment to our teams moving quickly.

Sometimes it even works. 😂

Moving too slowly is a problem, but moving too quickly can be, too. Leaders need to pace themselves to the speed of the organization and the team.

There’s nothing more painful that being a fast mover in a slow-moving organization (pretty much me the entire time I was in higher ed). Or vice versa.

We all go at our own speed. What’s yours? Photo by George Huffman on Unsplash

While sometimes we do need to help our teams speed up, move too quickly and you risk leaving your team behind or worse, burning them out.

And that’s no good, either.

Early in my CIO career I had a president lovingly tell me, “Rae, you only operate in 5th gear. If you down-shifted to 3rd every once in awhile you—and the people around you—would be happier.”

He was totally right (but don’t tell him, it’ll go to his head).

Leadership IS about speed, but it isn’t always about going full on, pedal-to-the-metal fast.

Instead, it’s more about speed modulation—like Goldilocks, finding the speed that’s just right for the team and situation.

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I’d love to know how you modulate your leadership speed! How do you decide when to move quickly and when to slow down, and how do you ensure that your team is keeping pace (or that you’re keeping pace with your team)?