Part 2: The speed of clarity
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Reader, Last week, I kicked off a series on building agency in your team. If you missed it, here’s a short recap: Agency is the ability to know what to do, why it matters, and how to take action as a team. This is more than words. It’s what Founders, CEOs, execs, and leaders at all levels long for, because a team with agency can: Make aligned decisions. …without you having to prod, remind, control, or hold them accountable all the time. In other words, agency sparks better performance through clarity, instead of outside influences like incentives, consequences, detailed processes, and complex accountability structures. In this email, we’re diving into the speed of clarity and what it takes to develop your team’s capacity to go faster… from the inside out. Hustle isn’t speed. One of the biggest ah-ha moments I’ve had while spending time with younger leaders is how quickly they want to respond and spring into action. But speed and deep thinking are opposites. Just as magnetic repulsion forces two magnets apart, speed pushes away deep thinking, and deep thinking pushes away speed. These two opposites can’t coexist in the same moment. And yet, there are times when your team needs to move quickly to make things happen. But it's costly if they speed off in the wrong direction. The danger of distraction. I’m sad to admit that at times, I get distracted. When my mind is going a mile a minute, I barely register what’s happening around me. Sometimes my son will ask a question that doesn’t even penetrate my internal, speeding thoughts. So he glares in frustration: “Did you even hear what I said?” No. I didn’t. And your team doesn’t either when they’re in hustle mode. You might as well be speaking another language for how much actually registers. Why? Because people literally cannot think deeply enough to understand the vision, strategies, and goals driving your company when there is no space, time, or margin. Sadly, even great leaders are still prone to believing they’re too busy to slow down. Too much to do. Deadlines. Clients waiting. Go. Faster. For many people, stopping this cycle feels like trying to push back a rushing river. Clarity is speed. One year, we built an elaborate obstacle course in our yard for our daughter’s birthday party. Each kid went through the course, looking ahead to see where to go next, sometimes tripping over the rocks in their path. But when it was my daughter’s turn, she crouched low, waited for the signal, and took off like lightning. She flew through the course so fast she nearly collapsed at the end. Her time was a full minute less. This happened for one important reason: She knew where she was going. The other kids didn’t. In the last email, we talked about the importance of each person on your team knowing: Where are you going? When you are clear at the start of every week and every day, you’re more likely to move quickly through the work, hitting milestones along the way… ending the week feeling fulfilled and calm. But the person who starts the week with an inbox to guide them -- and only a rough idea of what to focus on -- will get distracted and off track all week long, and will be lucky to hit even one milestone. But this email is not just about clarity. It’s not even just about speed. It’s about the rhythms that unleash agency. The rhythms of agency. Last year, I wrote about why you need rhythms like winning sports teams. You can check it out here. Thinking is calm, slow work. If you’ve ever studied flow, you know that entering a state of flow (where time fades, creativity elevates, and productivity soars) follows a four-phase process: Struggle → Release → Flow → Recovery Let’s look at how this applies to agency, decision-making, and team performance. Struggle is like training season. You’re building skills, honing habits, pushing limits, and developing capacity. These strategic rhythms look like:
Release is the moment an ah-ha arrives. Clarity lands, and the team is ready to focus. These decision-making rhythms look like:
Flow is game time. Everyone is operating at a high level and working together to achieve the goal. These productivity rhythms look like:
Recovery is the off-season. A break from the mental and physical stress of intense focus, allowing full recovery and reflection on what’s next. These creativity rhythms look like:
Without rhythms like this, a fast-paced, speed-centric culture takes its toll. The result? A bunch of disjointed work that kind of hits the mark and is basically “meh.” It’s “fine.” As a friend says, it wasn’t overwhelming. It wasn’t underwhelming. It was just whelming. Companies that are just whelming don’t win. People don’t stay long at “fine” companies. And nothing frustrates a team faster than working hard, making sacrifices, and getting mediocre results. What if your company won’t slow down? That’s a tough one. At some point, you have to decide whether it’s possible to influence the culture and whether it’s worth staying. Experience has convinced me that it only takes one person to create meaningful change that ripples through an organization. And that person doesn’t have to hold the highest title. Usually, they don’t. Reset your pace. When your pace trends toward speed and you see your team moving fast but not effectively, the way through is to look ahead and restart all four rhythms: strategic, decision-making, productivity, and creativity. Interrupt the pattern for yourself first. Then make it possible for your team.
All to build your capacity to go faster with agency. And if at first you don’t succeed, try again. Prioritize time for deep thinking that creates clear action, and you won’t regret it. Up next: Letting go without losing control. Enjoy, Prefer to view the newsletter in our app? Scan the QR code to download it now. Like this content? Subscribe, read past posts, and share it here. Follow me on LinkedIn |