How to Balance Speed With Strategic Planning

Fast thinking gets a bad rap. ‘Think like a startup’ sounds glib. ‘Move fast and break things’ sounds like an excuse for people who like to break things. So how do you do strategy at speed without the drama and the damage? I’ve been working with strategy projects with a fintech and a ventures lab - two organizations that instinctively run on speed - and we’ve found ways to be both fast and thoughtful. Genuine sprints. We get together for an hour to talk intensively about a specific slice of the problem and then write it up. We give ourselves 24 hours to work on something. We speak with an expert or a person working at the coal-face of the problem, who can make us smarter within a day. Having only a day to solve something builds intellectual openness into a project. I’ve covered a lot of ground - literally - with a client who enjoys a high-intensity discussion while speed-walking at a treadmill desk. Solve big strategic problems as product problems. Strategy is big and exploratory. Addressing it like a product problem can simplify it. Pin down a vague idea into a plan for a customer-facing product. Can we simplify this down to the problem we solve, and the people we solve it for? The Business Model Canvas helps here. It was created for startup businesses but it has clarifying powers for strategy projects in general. (Credit to Saneel Radia who sparked the idea of using the canvas as a strategy tool, and Sean Lyons who used to clarify airy 'what-if' business proposals at R/GA by asking how you could make them into a useful service for a client.) Reduce the homework. A deep 4Cs analysis is a beautiful thing. If you don’t have time for that depth, reduce the ask to what’s the most important thing to explore about the customer, the category or the culture? You need judgement or a theory of victory here, and it liberates the team when they are tasked to do less.  Be prepared to pivot. Sprints throw up discoveries, and a big discovery can send a project in a different direction. This is a good thing. The short lead time requires you to have breakthroughs and to act on them.  Be 80% right. Many strategists run on being right. Most businesses and business leaders run on momentum. (Felicia Zhang has written some great posts on this.) So the goal isn’t completeness or perfection, it’s having enough conviction to move forward. Be open about this trade-off, and be comfortable to be 80% right in 50% of the time. Fast strategy doesn't have to be sleeping-bags-in-the-office hardcore. It starts with honesty and openness, because you are consciously working with less. It takes collaboration between the client and the consultant because you both have to do the work. And it creates respect for others' time and energy, because sprint-paced work makes everyone’s time more precious. If you are a leader who needs to figure out a bigger future for their brand or business, we should be talking. Let’s do a quick Zoom or a philosopher’s walk.

"Should we move fast or build it right?" 🤔 This might be the most common debate in product development. But it's the wrong question. The real question isn't whether to prioritize speed or quality — it's how to optimize for continuous value delivery to the customer and the business. And that means keeping both in balance: ⚡️ Speed isn't just about getting to market quickly: ↳ Your customers start getting value sooner, which means faster revenue generation and business impact ↳ You accelerate your learning cycles, enabling faster iterations and a better product ↳ You maintain competitive advantage by responding to market needs more rapidly ↳ The faster you ship, the more opportunities you have to course-correct based on real data 🎯 Quality isn't just about preventing bugs: ↳ You build and maintain customer trust and brand reputation through reliable, polished experiences ↳ Your foundation stays solid as you scale, preventing costly rebuilds ↳ Teams can iterate faster when working with well-structured code ↳ You avoid the compounding technical debt that slows future development Here's what teams should be focused on to keep them optimized: 1️⃣ Front-load research and planning Code is the most expensive part of product development. Invest time upfront in research and validation to ensure you're building the right thing before writing a single line of code. 2️⃣ Build reusable foundations Create robust, reusable components — from design systems to analytics frameworks. This initial investment pays dividends in both speed and quality for future development. Make the expensive parts easy. 3️⃣ Think in evolution, not versions Map out potential evolution paths. Consider scale, learnings, and iteration scenarios. Build with change in mind, but don't over-engineer for scenarios that may never materialize. 4️⃣ Define meaningful quality bars Quality isn't binary. Define what "good enough" means for each release phase. Your v1 quality bar should enable clear signals about product-market fit while maintaining customer trust. 5️⃣ Optimize for learning Speed and quality should serve your learning goals. Structure releases to maximize learning while maintaining standards that keep customers happy and engaged. The best product teams don't see speed and quality as competitors — they see them as complementary forces that, when balanced properly, drive better outcomes for everyone. #productmanagement #engineering #leadership #strategy ♻️ If you found this useful and think others might as well, please repost for reach!

We've spent years pushing for the concept of "better together", advocating for the importance of alignment across sales, product, and success. However, it's time to stop talking about "better together"; we all understand and get it. Let's do, "Together. Better." Especially today, when speed is essential and demanded in everything we do. Speed is seductive. It feels like progress. It looks like momentum. But without alignment, speed just creates motion sickness (OK, so maybe I'm still recovering from thinking about altitude sickness after a week in Peru). You get busy teams chasing goals that are aligned at the 30,000-foot level, but aren't aligned in where the work actually happens. There are unspoken and competing agendas. And fleeting and shallow wins that celebrate individual victories but not company wins. In the end, we're all left with mounting frustration that no one can quite name, but everyone feels. This is one of the hardest balancing acts in leadership: How do we move fast without breaking trust, clarity, or direction? How do we actually do "together, better?" The answer is not to slow down. It is to align more intentionally. More often. And more visibly. Alignment is not a kickoff slide or a mission statement. It is a discipline. A muscle. A shared drumbeat that keeps people running together, not just running. Because without alignment, speed scales confusion. With alignment, speed scales outcomes. My thoughts on three ways to lead with both speed and alignment: 🔹 Communicate decisions out loud. Assume nothing. Clarity compounds when leaders speak directly and often about what is changing and why. I've lost track of the number of times I thought something was communicated clearly, but realized I had been working on a concept for months and had only communicated it to the team for a few days. 🔹 Cascade purpose, not just tasks. When people understand the “why,” they can act faster and smarter without waiting for permission. Prioritize perspective over permission, which means sharing openly, broadly, and consistently enough context to create the perspective that lets people closest to the work make confident, bold, and faster decisions. 🔹 Check for drift. Build in rhythm to realign. Fast-moving teams need regular calibration. Without it, small gaps become big ones. At DISQO, our cross-departmental, recurring meetings are focused on ensuring continued alignment and providing colleagues with the opportunity to understand changes and collaborate on solving gaps together. Are you ready for "Together. Better?" #CreateTheFuture #LeadershipInAction #StrategicAlignment #HighVelocityTeams #LeadWithClarity #ExecutionExcellence #FutureOfLeadership #TeamPerformance #GTMLeadership #CultureOfExecution #ScaleWithPurpose #CustomerSuccessLeadership