Why direction is much more important than speed
We’ve been told for many years that working faster, putting more hours and even multi-tasking are our north stars. If we are exhausted by the end of the week, we are on the right path. I believe this is all wrong, specially for knowledge workers in the age of infinite leverage.
The faster you travel on the wrong road, the farther you travel in the wrong direction.
Speed is just faster
Some people think that speed is the all-important factor. It’s really not. The more important factor is DIRECTION. Because if you’re traveling in the right direction, sooner or later your destination will be reached. Which IS the point.
After all, what good is it to arrive at the wrong destination QUICKER? What consolation is it to say, “Well, I may not be at the right place, but I sure made good time”! Nonsense. The goal is to arrive at the right place — even if it takes longer than expected.
A painful reminder
Back in 2010 I founded a gaming studio, when social games where a thing. It was my first experience as a founder, and I was much more focused in working long hours and executing fast than in making sure that we were on the right track.
By 2011 we had launched our first game, Race Town, which was quite successful considering it was our first product. We were seeing 15k new organic users per day, with a 28% DAU/MAU stickiness ratio. Facebook featured the game three times globally. Volkswagen was a game sponsor.
We were working 70 hours per week. This of course, had an impact in my health, my relationship and led to the burn out of some team members that we lost. What’s worst, we didn’t see a quick consumer shift trend coming: mobile as a new gaming platform. Twelve months after launching the game we started to see changes in some key metrics: new installs and stickiness were decreasing, however we were not making changes to the game that could explain this. When I traveled to GDC that year, I talked to other founders and understood that we were already in the wrong direction: the wind had changed and we were already late to the new trend.
We were executing at full speed…in the wrong direction (and with a high cost in team morale and mental health of the founders)
Where do I want to go?
To make sure which direction to take, we must first answer the question:
How do I know where I want to go? Not many people stop to think this through and it’s the most important question to answer for personal life and for a business.
Here are some actions I’ve taken in the past that have helped me decide the destination of my businesses:
1. Develop a habit of reading
I consider the habit of reading a meta-habit: it helps understand more how to improve more our health, relationships, business and in general, acquire new knowledge by standing on the shoulders of giants. In case you are struggling with developing a new habit, I wrote this article that might help you.
2. Read about history
As Brett Seyler told me recently, studying history shows us the underlying frameworks behind human behavior.
Understanding human behavior is important to predict how clients will react to changes (which can inform us to decide that we need to change our direction). History helps us understand culture, traditions, gov systems, and in general how the world works.
If you are new to history books as I am, I can’t recommend enough the book Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari.
3. Talk frequently to advisors or mentors
Talk frequently about your ideas, hypothesis and views of the future. Seek for gaps in your reasoning.
If possible, find a mentor 10–15 years ahead on your chosen career path for optimal learning. More senior than that, and they won’t be in touch with what you do.
4. Talk frequently to other leaders of your same industry
Back in the days when I was running my game studio, ZupCat, I remember I had an epiphany when at GDC, I was talking to different founders of other game studios, about the game industry in general.
I realized that almost all of them were pivoting from creating social games to developing mobile games because 1) their user acquisition cost had skyrocketed (Facebook had just made significant changes) 2) feedback from VCs was that social games were not interesting anymore and 3) competition was fierce, lots of free to play games being released each month.
I came back to Buenos Aires and shared this insights with my co-founders, and we decided that we needed to pivot to mobile games.
Talking to others about your hypothesis and asking them about their view of the future is really valuable, and it can be beneficial to all parties, even when you are talking to competitors.
5. Listen carefully to your sales team
Sales is the skin of the company. They are the first team members who will identify that client behavior has changed. Your value proposition might not be so sexy with a new context, or your product might be perceived as old because there is a new player with a much better product.
Any significant changes that might trigger a new direction, will sooner or later be noticed by sales. They will see changes in their conversion rates (getting meetings, closing deals, etc).
6. Frequently validate your hypothesis
Write down a short list of hypothesis and another of proven truths (plus: write down also the evidence so you don’t fool yourself with the truths list).
In my case, I use Notes because I can even add ideas/insights/questions while moving, working out or even running. Plus I have it synchronized with Notes on my computer.
What this means for entrepreneurs
Direction is specially true for entrepreneurs starting a company. In the early days, everything is a hypothesis that needs to be verified.
It’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we are going in the right direction, because we are biased and because our ego can easily fool us. Acknowledging our blindspots is critical.
My recommendation to new founders: building a new company takes time, and finding the right direction is crucial, even if it means going slower.
Spend a lot of quality time meeting with other stakeholders, potential clients, figuring out what they want and how it lines up with the vision. Spend time asking questions, and a lot of time listening.
If the team is heading the right way, and if we’re working with the right people and tools, we’ll build up speed over time.
The elephant in the room: anxiety
Many entrepreneurs are anxious by nature, biased towards action. It’s common for these types of personalities to feel the impulse to do stuff.
And of course when founders are feeling the need to build the company, spending time finding the right direction can feel like we are not making any progress. It can feel like we are underperforming.
In my experience, anxiety must be managed because choosing the wrong direction only because we feel anxious and want to start moving fast, is the most expensive mistake we can make as founders and leaders.
If you are a founder and you want to work on your anxiety, check out this article about anxiety management that can help.
What can we do to stay on course?
This lesson applies to travel, personal life and business. Basically, it applies to life itself. As you’re traveling through life, it’s a good idea every now and then to check on your direction. Some actions that have helped me in the past:
- Avoid being too busy to think about strategic decisions regarding direction (personal or business). Block time in your week to think.
- To me, this type of thinking is similar to any creative work (right side of the brain) than to any logical (left side of the brain). For this reason, I tend to avoid being at the computer. I go for walks or running and usually some interesting insights and ideas pop in my mind, that I hadn’t thought of before.
- Take care of your mental and physical health ❤️
