Speed Is a Competence
Most leaders think speed is a personality trait , some people are fast, some aren’t. They’re wrong. Speed is a skill. And like every skill, there’s a learning curve most organizations haven’t even started climbing.
In psychology, the four stages of competence describe how humans learn any new skill. They apply to organizations too. And they explain why most companies are losing to competitors they think they’re better than.
Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence
You don’t know you’re slow.
This is where most organisations live. They don’t see their slowness because it’s dressed up as “rigour,” “governance,” and “due diligence.”
Days become weeks. Weeks become months of lost revenue. Then you missed your targets, burned too much cash, and now you’re letting people go. The slow decision was the expensive one, but nobody tracks it that way, so nobody learns.
The hidden costs of slow are invisible precisely because you’re not looking: carrying inventory, reworking outdated plans, managing bloated work-in-progress queues, re-recruiting the top talent who left because you made them wait.
“Let’s wait for more data” is usually code for “I’m afraid to decide.” But nobody calls it fear. They call it prudence. That’s Stage 1.
When IT says “no” too often, your team doesn’t stop. They just go underground, shadow IT, workarounds, untracked risk. You think you have control. You have theatre. “Zero risk” is a fantasy that costs you market share.
Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence
You realise speed is a thing you’re failing at.
This is the uncomfortable stage. You start measuring and the numbers are brutal.
Tiny improvements compound. A 1% edge per week is a 67% advantage by year-end. Your competitors aren’t waiting for your committee to reconvene.
Elite tech performers ship 3x as much per day and have lower failure rates. Speed and quality of decision-making are statistically correlated. Small, fast changes are easier to fix than big, slow releases.
Top talent hates friction. Remove it or they leave. It’s that simple.
You look around and realize: your executive team takes a week to greenlight tactical issues. Someone needs three approvals to do their job. People kill momentum with undetailed “concerns” that never come with probabilities, options, or mitigations. Your technology leader is playing security police instead of enabling speed. Your legal team says “No” without offering a “How.”
A 1% chance of a legal issue is not worth a 100% guarantee of missing your quarterly target.
You’re not unlucky. You’re slow. And now you know it.
Stage 3: Conscious Competence
You build the systems. It takes effort and focus.
This is where you install the operating system for speed. It works, but it requires constant attention.
Decision architecture. Every decision goes into two buckets. Type 1: irreversible, high stakes = deliberate carefully. Type 2: reversible = decide now, adjust later. Most decisions are Type 2. Most organisations treat them all as Type 1. That’s where speed dies. Push Type 2 decisions lower in the org. If your exec team is deciding tactical issues, your structure is wrong.
Demand rigour, not delay. Don’t accept vague concerns. Make people think it through: the probabilities, the options, the mitigations. Expected value (probability × all outcomes) fixes prioritization overnight. Replace “We can’t do that” with “Here’s how we can do that safely.”
Measure throughput. In every department, leads, deals, deliveries, resolutions. What gets measured accelerates.
Remove friction. No meetings without a clear decision to be made. Your product team ships regularly and publishes performance. Respond to clients faster and with more value than they expected. When you enable speed, people stay on the paved road where you can see them. Speed is visibility. And visibility is the only real security you have.
Speed is not haste. Speed is high professionalism. At this stage you’re proving that every day.
Stage 4: Unconscious Competence
Speed becomes culture. The org defaults to fast.
This is the end state. Speed stops being a programme and starts being identity. You don’t have to push people to move, the systems, habits, and hiring all reinforce it. Fast is just how things work here.
How do you get here?
Leadership sets a visible, high state of urgency, not panic, but relentless forward motion. You weaponize “disagree and commit”: debate hard, decide fast, execute fully. You train teams on speed frameworks: Type 1/Type 2 decisions, OODA loops, the five dysfunctions that kill team velocity.
You shift domain authority to small teams and let them run without interference in the how. You make speed a KPI in all reporting. You visibly reward output. You promote the doers.
The result: your organization learns and iterates faster than the market can move. You solve more complex problems in less time. You attract and retain the best people because they can feel the momentum the moment they walk in.
Speed is a competence. Most organizations are still at Stage 1.
Where are you?
References:
Google Cloud / DORA (DevOps Research & Assessment)
Source of: The “Speed = Stability” findings, including the statistic that elite performers recover 6,572x faster and have a 3x lower change failure rate.
McKinsey & Company
Source of: “The Need for Speed” research showing fast organizations have 2x higher operational resilience and financial performance.
Gartner
Source of: The cybersecurity survey finding that 69% of employees have bypassed their organization’s guidance to get work done.
Gartner Survey Finds 69% of Employees Have Bypassed Cybersecurity Guidance
Amazon (Jeff Bezos)
Source of: The “Type 1 vs. Type 2” decision-making framework and the “Day 1” culture concept.
Bain & Company
Source of: “The Founder’s Mentality” and research on “Organizational Drag” (the $3 trillion productivity cost).
The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Source of: “Time-Based Competition” concepts proving that reducing time-to-market lowers overall costs.
Colonel John Boyd
Source of: The OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) military strategy applied to business speed.
YouTube Resource (CISO Talk)
Source of: The argument that culture and contracting are the primary barriers to speed and security.
Overcoming Cultural and Contracting Barriers to Speed and Security