How NOT to Lead

CHAPTER 6Go Slow to Be Fast

Slow is Smooth, and Smooth is Fast

—U.S. Navy SEALs

In most businesses and in life, the goal is often to go as fast as possible. This is especially applicable in technology. Every technology leader you encounter is working to be first to market. Silicon Valley is teeming with technology companies and startups focused on fast execution and growth at all costs. Entire development methodologies, such as agile development, are built around this concept. Do what you can with what you have, make it work, iterate, and push forward. Always forward. Faster than the competition means victory. At least, that is the thinking.

Look at the world of application (app) development. Before 2020, the average time to develop an app and get it to market was around 12 months from start to finish (Julia Basysta, How to correctly estimate your app development timeline, 2020). For a more extended app development project, the timeline before 2020 could be as long as 18 months, including the time for market research and product validation. In 2023, an app can be produced fully, including market research and product validation, in a rough average of fewer than nine months.

Although improving development speed by three months may not seem like much, that development speed today means that in March 2023, approximately 31,500 mobile apps were released through the Apple App Store (Statista, 2023). That number was up by 2 percent compared to the previous month. In the Android ...