The Power of Tempo

I've always struggled to restrain my internal "sense of urgency". In business, my personal bias has always been toward action. And lots of it.

Some may argue that my approach resembled; "Ready, Fire, Aim!".

I think that's a typical response to someone who really wants to see things happen quickly. The reaction is "Not so fast!" or "We're being too reckless!" The danger in eliciting these responses is that it creates the opposite effect.

Instead of increasing the pace of work, people "dig their heels in" and resist, rather than getting on board and fast tracking a solution.

The business challenge works just like a Chinese finger puzzle. When you insert your fingers in each end of the tiny tube and then try to pull your fingers free, the puzzle grips your fingers more tightly. What seems like an obvious solution to the puzzle is the wrong one.

I've learned a more effective approach is to gently increase the tempo of work. Think of it like a metronome. By gradually increasing the tempo over time, your team will work at an improved pace - something they might have resisted, had you attempted the increase in one big jump.

Try breaking the habit of weekly progress meetings. It's very easy to fall into the trap of meeting on a regularly scheduled basis. Sure, meeting every Friday at 9am is easy to remember, but it imposes a certain pace on the project.

So break the habit.

Try meeting on Mondays and Thursdays. Set the unconscious expectation that the same work will happen before each meeting. What was once a ten week project, becomes a five week project. Simply meeting more frequently to report on progress, sets the expectation that progress should be made.

You begin to break that old college habit of starting the term paper the night before it's due. With weekly business meetings, the work usually gets done the night (or hour!) before the meeting.

Increasing the meeting frequency also allows you more frequent opportunities to reset expectations.

"Guys, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to BE!"

Let's get our prototype up and running, set the right expectations with our internal customers (let them know it's a prototype), allow people to use it. Then improve it.

Our goal is to make version 2 bug free. Let's not try to architect perfection. Let's built it based on user/customer experience.

The longer term benefit of increasing the pace and NOT trying for perfection, is that you begin to develop a learning organization. Expect some mistakes and begin to see them as improvement opportunities. "Blame" is expunged from your team vocabulary. And as the rapid prototype mindset takes hold, you begin to see other incremental improvement opportunities in every process you use.

By looking at each opportunity as a challenge to improve through "tweaks" and multiple iterations, you slowly empower your team to identify opportunities on their own. Not all changes have to come as a result of a big project. Teams can make a big impact my making incremental progress on lots of smaller projects too.

Finally, remember that Teams Win and Coaches fail. If the result of one of your accelerated projects is less than expected. Take the heat for your team. If you're asking them to take a risk by developing 90% solutions, you had better provide "cover" for them. And when the team has success, give them ALL the credit.

I think you'll be pleased with the results.

Here are the Cliff notes:

1. Gently increase the tempo.

2. Aim for a 90% solution.

3. Pilot and improve.

4. Migrate to a learning organization.

5. Take the heat, when necessary.