The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 317 - Go Slow To Go Fast

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: I want to share with you today a mantra that I have been repeating over and over and over again with my clients in the last couple years. They've found it really helpful.

Pete: Is this another made up word, or a made up phrase, or an invented mantra, or a Jen Waldman-ism?

Jen: Well, I think it is a Jen Waldman-ism, but it's made of real words.

Pete: Okay, great.

Jen: And the words are: Go slow to go fast.

Pete: Oh, nice. Go slow to go fast. Yeah. I mean, I feel like I'm thinking of The Tortoise and The Hare already, clearly, because I have a fourteen-month-old son. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay. So how did we come to, go slow to go fast? This phrase started to become a mantra for me in recent years, because I do a lot of work with clients on career strategy and goal setting and building out a plan for how they're going to reach their goals. And in doing that, I end up sharing a lot of what might be considered like inside information about how our industry works. And a lot of times, the information is surprising and creates all of these aha moments, and suddenly, like things make sense in a way they didn't previously make sense. And the phenomenon that happens when suddenly you understand a lot of things that seemed elusive or confusing is, it's like, "Oh my gosh, I get it. Let's go." And they want to start racing toward this goal, because now they understand how to reach it.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And so, I need to keep reminding them, "Go slow to go fast. Give yourself the time. Give yourself the space. Give yourself a chance to make amendments to your work. Practice patience. Build the relationships. Now that you know you want this thing and you can achieve it, ask yourself, do you want to do it fast? Or do you want to do it in a sustainable way? Do you want to do it fast and maybe make a lot of errors, and then have to go back to the beginning and start from scratch again? Or do you want to take the time that it actually takes to do it, in a way that feels like it has intention and integrity? Go slow to go fast. Because once you lay the groundwork and take the time to build a really solid foundation, you can move very quickly. But if you're moving fast with nothing underneath you, you're just going to fall down and hurt your tush."

Pete: Yeah. Yes. Do you remember who it was...I feel like it was an old American president, that said something like (I'm going to totally butcher this), "If I was given three hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first two sharpening the axe."

Jen: It was either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. You know, friends out there listening, fact check me.

Pete: Please. Fact check the Australian who tried to quote American historical politics. I think about that quote actually surprisingly often, because I think it's so descriptive for learning and leadership development and coaching and goal setting, to your point. That it's very easy in, I mean, in the literal case of that metaphor, it's like I could spend three hours chopping down a tree with a really blunt axe and "go fast" in the sense that I'm fast in the way that I'm attacking the tree. But I might, after two hours, be absolutely exhausted and realize I'm only halfway through, because I had a blunt axe. Versus, what if I sharpen the axe? What if I got my gear ready? What if I did all of that prep work? And then, when I started cutting down the tree, it was like so much easier, because the groundwork had been like, the axe had been sharpened.

Jen: Yes. You know, the seventh habit of highly effective people is, "Sharpen the saw."

Pete: Oh, right. Oh my gosh, I haven't read that book for so long.

Jen: Right?

Pete: Well, there's a fun throwback to Stephen Covey. Yeah...yes. The other word I heard you say was "sustainable", which feels important to emphasize. Because I hear this, "Go slow to go fast," and I've spent many many cycles and energy and time in tech startup world, and you often hear, "Move fast and break things," as a mantra. It was a popular mantra at Facebook, in the very very early days, that kind of became legendized. (I don't know if that's a word.) But it became legend in Silicon Valley to, "Move fast and break things. And when you break them, then you realize it didn't work, and you go back and you fix it, and you go again," which feels sort of counter to what you just said, which is, "Go slow to go fast." But I feel like there's different circumstances where each of these apply. And what I liked to hear in your description is, we want to be building things or creating things or moving in a way that is sustainable. And going fast to break things is widely considered to be unsustainable because, at some point, you need to have some traction. You need to have some level of consistency and sustainable momentum to be able to maintain. You can't be constantly sprinting and breaking things.

Jen: Yes. I have so much to say on the subject. But I feel like I first need to remind all of our listeners of a documentary that you told me to watch, which was called The Social Dilemma, which I think is an example of what happens when you go fast to go fast, is you end up creating addiction in an entire global population.

Pete: Yeah. Move fast and break things, like break culture...jesus.

Jen: Anyway, sorry to take us down that dark rabbit hole. But you make a really, really good point. There are certain things that actually take time to build in a way that is healthy and meaningful. Relationships, for example.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: And part of what I try to do with the studio is help people understand when we need to actually move quickly because moving slowly doesn't have an outsized impact, and when moving slowly does. Like just as an example, I teach a bunch of different performance classes that are all based on process. I do a class helping people prepare their callback material. And the whole point of that class is, "How fast can you go and still do amazing work?"

Pete: Nice.

Jen: And then, I also teach a class called Preparing a Role, which happens over months of time. In one class, they might be working on that role for a callback, and I'm like, "Can you get it done in forty-eight hours?" And in the other class, they're working on that role to actually play it, and I'm like, "We could work on this literally forever."

Pete: Yeah, I love that. Okay. So something happened, I guess a few months ago, in one of the workshops I was running, where I was working with this very high-functioning fast-paced team who are, to a fault, used to going very fast and dealing with high pressure situations in a very large organization. And one of the things, halfway through the workshop, I asked a reflection question something along the lines of, "What's been most helpful for you so far," and one of the participants said, "I just really value slowing down to speed up." And I hadn't heard it said like that before. And I thought it was quite useful to think about, you know, in learning or a workshop that you might be running or attending (sorry, for me) that like is providing you skills and techniques and ideas that are you slowing down so that when you go back to the race or you go back to the sprint, you are able to move faster. You're able to speed up, because you now have better tools in your tool kit that enable you to speed more effectively or run faster....I don't know, I'm mixing metaphors now.

Jen: In the kind of work we're both talking about, I do think ultimately we want to be able to move quickly, and the idea is to do the work it takes to make that possible. I bring this up a lot in my classes: Years ago, during the Super Bowl...which is American football, by the way, Pete.

Pete: I'm familiar.

Jen: Okay. So during the Super Bowl, they were doing a puff piece interview that had been pre-recorded with the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, and he said, "The point of practice, and running all of these drills over and over and over again, and studying all of these plays over and over and over again is so on game day, my only job is to react."

Pete: Yeah. Oh, that's good.

Jen: And I just, I loved that. I was like, "Yes. That's what all of this foundational work is for. Going slow, examining it, really understanding, building something you can trust, so that you can actually use it and be agile."

Pete: Yeah. That's good. That's really good. That's like the James Clear-ism of, "You don't rise to the level of your expectations. You fall to the level of your habits or your training."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I feel like that's been attributed to so many people. Again, it might have been an old American president who said that one as well. Who knows? So the word that's coming up for me is "intentionality". Like the "go slow" part feels like acting or working with intention, which I think sometimes can be, if I was thinking about it myself, that could be the thing that I'm missing if I'm not onboard why going slow is important. If someone was to say to me, "No, no," like you just sort of described, "No, the reason we go slow is because it enables us to be more intentional, or enables us to be more effective or just be able to react when it comes to your Super Bowl equivalent or even just like a normal game equivalent. It doesn't have to be the Super Bowl." So, it's the intentionality. It's almost like, you know, you're a Questioner, and you always want to know why something is the way it is or why you should care about the thing. I feel like the reason you want to is that it's enabling you to be more intentional and deliberate with where you spend energy, which is a good thing, which means you're ultimately, hopefully, more likely to reach your goal or get closer to said goal.

Jen: What has become so starkly evident for me over the years, because, you know, I do a lot of teaching of how to effectively reach out and connect with people.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Is that, you can't go fast in building relationships and building trust. Like, that happens over time. And if you go too fast, the trust will erode very quickly. And then, you're back at square one, or sometimes like behind square one, and you have to really start over again. So when I am teaching the reach out practices, I always tell people, "Start slow. Start with gratitude. If you've never introduced yourself to an artist whose work you admire, for example, practice with gratitude. Don't ask for a favor. Don't offer anything other than gratitude. That's a way to start slow." And for a lot of people, they're like, "But now that I have the guts to reach out, shouldn't I x, y, and z?" It's like, "No. No. Take a breath. If what you actually are seeking is connection and trust and, ultimately, a relationship, you 've got to start slow." And it can be frustrating.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: It can be frustrating, because you're like, "But I want it now. I want it now." Well, hopefully you'll want it tomorrow too.

Pete: Yeah. I feel like this is the moment of the podcast where I start to feel called out. And I'm wondering...because I agree with you, and I feel like I know that to be true and have done a relatively good job of building some pretty important relationships. (Strategic relationships, in a work sense, are the ones that come into mind.) And I'm wondering if my definition of "slow" and "fast" can differ to someone else's definition of "slow" and "fast".

Jen: Oh, yeah. For sure.

Pete: What I might think of as, "I could check in on that proposal, for example, that I sent a week ago," that's still me acting slow. And they might be like, "Hey, I have a meeting in two weeks time with the decisionmaker. Let's have a catch up after that." And I'm like, "Oh god, that feels like it's going very slow. I thought I was being patient and slow." I feel like there's my own definition of "slow" and "fast". Especially, I mean, this is very specific to my situation, but there's probably others that are listening that it is similar to them. But when you are a very small organization, your version of fast, I think, is a lot faster than someone working in a corporate's version of fast, or someone working in a giant organization's version of fast. For them, fast might be, "Wow, we made a decision in two months. That's a great result for us. It usually takes six." Whereas, when you're a small business owner, you might make a decision like in a day or less,

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "We're either going, or we're not. I'm either doing this, or I'm not." Whereas, "I've got to go through the process, talk to the stakeholders, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And so, I'm just calling myself out to say, "Hey, Pete, are you measuring whether things are going well, based on your definition of slow and fast versus their definition?" And I think I know the answer.

Jen: Interesting. And sidebar, I have a rule for myself (which I also share with my clients, so I will share it with you, Pete) that if I am sending someone something that needs reviewing, so if there are materials that a person needs to review and we have not agreed upon a timeline before I hit send, I am not allowed to follow up unless fourteen days have passed. That is my rule for myself.

Pete: Okay. I feel like I need the fourteen day rule.

Jen: Yeah. And then, at that point, it's just a check in, like, "Hey, do you need more time with this?"

Pete: Yeah, it's funny...I'm just going to defend myself for a second. I think I would usually probably wait about the same amount of time. However, having it explicitly stated as a rule, I can already feel is going to take away some of the self-flagellation within that fourteen days, to be like, "Has it been fourteen? It's been ten. Oh my god, it's ten. Is it too slow? Is it going fast? Is it going slow? Is it going fast? Oh my god, is this going well?" Actually, just going, "You can't even think about it for fourteen days."

Jen: That's right.

Pete: It is really helpful, as a rule. And if they get back in touch with you within five, then great. Let's go.

Jen: Then, you go, "Wow. This went so much faster than I expected."

Pete: Ah, practicing patience. Goddamn it, Jen Waldman, you got me again.

Jen: I know it. Well, again, like I don't mean to make this a reach out episode...but maybe we should do one coming up. But I really do believe that you need to have your follow-up, follow-through plan in place before you hit send. And if you don't have one, you are not ready to hit send.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: That's a go slow to go fast moment, where it's like, "Wait a minute. Let me figure out, what is my plan if these scenarios happen? Okay, I know what I'm going to do. Send."

Pete: Well, this is grounding. I feel like in the very early days of this podcast, one of the distinctions we made between ourselves was that you were a planner and I was not. And I thought, in the last few years, I've closed that gap...which I do think I have. I've become a much better planner, most likely thanks to the influence of my wife. And now I'm just realizing again, in this moment, that there's still a bit of a gap between you and I, and your incredible ability to plan with intention so that you can move with intention. You know, to go slow to go fast is just, you know, chef's kiss. You're very good at it.

Jen: Thank you. And I also have learned a lot from you about how I can sometimes get in my own way by over-planning. And sometimes, when it's not that deep, it's fine to just go.

Pete: Yeah. I think that's the tension we were alluding to earlier, is the, "When's the go slow? When's the go fast? When's the move fast and break things, versus, 'Oh my god, I broke culture'? Like, what are the things we need to be sprinting on, versus, 'I'm hiding in inaction'," which is something we've talked about plenty of times.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So yeah, "Am I going slow and practicing patience and moving with intention, or am I hiding in inaction and convincing myself that this is the right thing to do because I'm scared?" So it's like, that's the constant dance I think we're all doing.

Jen: Yeah. I guess it turns out, Pete, that in certain contexts, we are both the tortoise and the hare.

Pete: Ha, nice callback. That is The Long and The Short Of It.