Why "do more, go faster" applies to leadership just as much as it does to teams.
In most companies — especially in tech — the rallying cry of “do more, go faster” is aimed squarely at delivery teams. Ship faster. Work harder. Push more features out the door. But if we’re serious about speed, that standard can’t stop at the IC level. True speed is a system outcome, and leadership is part of that system. If leaders don’t hold themselves to the same standard they demand of teams, the whole machine slows down.
The irony is that many leadership-side bottlenecks are both predictable and avoidable: slow approvals, unclear priorities, shifting requirements, unresolved dependencies. But there’s a deeper issue — the unwillingness or inability to move slowly and deliberately in order to go faster. It’s tempting to chase visible urgency because it looks like progress, but rushing without clarity is a false economy. When you factor in the full lifecycle costs — bugs, rework, morale erosion, trust loss, and technical debt — the fail-fast default burns more time than it saves.
Deliberateness isn’t the opposite of speed; it’s the enabler of it. Time spent upfront on clarity, alignment, and realistic commitments pays back with cleaner execution, fewer interruptions, and more sustainable delivery. Leadership that slows itself down to get it right isn’t “dragging its feet” — it’s modeling the discipline that keeps the whole system moving.
Accountability symmetry means leaders apply the same lens to their own work that they apply to their teams: set clear priorities, make fast and informed decisions, resolve dependencies promptly, and protect execution focus. When leadership works this way, teams see the example, feel the impact, and trust the pace. When it doesn’t, no amount of sprinting at the team level can overcome the drag from the top.
Speed is not the product of pressure; it’s the product of removing friction everywhere it exists.
Speed is not the product of pressure; it’s the product of removing friction everywhere it exists. That means beyond team productivity, we need leadership productivity — and the willingness to see that in the race to go faster, leadership’s pace is the first one that matters.
