Almost two years ago, I worked with a large Mexican company. The project involved deploying AI agents across several areas of the business. The company president delegated the initiative to a special projects manager. We submitted our proposal. The timeline was aggressive: three months from start to finish.
She came back to me and said something I’ll never forget: “I’ve managed projects that took longer.”
She was referring to the price. How could a project that only took three months cost that much? My answer was simple: You’re not paying me for three months of my time. You’re paying for the impact this will have on your business once it’s operational.
That’s an important distinction. Time spent and value created are not the same thing. If I can create the same outcome in three months that someone else needs twelve months to create, that doesn’t make my work less valuable. The speed is part of the value.
But there was a bigger problem. She had never managed a project like this before. Neither had the organization. Their reference point was the way projects had always been done. Slowly. Meetings. Approvals. More meetings. Waiting. Revisiting decisions. Adapting everything to the organization’s existing pace.
They were accustomed to vendors who accepted that pace. I wanted no part of it. I pride myself on moving with intentional speed. Once I understand the problem and know which direction I’m going, I move. Fast.
Some organizations love this. Most don’t.
And therein lies one of the great contradictions of business. Everyone admires Elon Musk. Companies study Tesla and SpaceX. Executives talk about innovation, urgency, first-principles thinking, and challenging the status quo.
Most businesses would probably kill to hire Elon Musk. Until Elon Musk is sitting in their conference room. Until he starts asking why a requirement exists. Until he questions a process everyone considers untouchable. Until he wants a decision today instead of scheduling another meeting for next Thursday. Until he asks why something needs six months when it could be done in six weeks.
Suddenly, they don’t want Elon Musk anymore. They want the results of Elon Musk operating at the pace of their existing bureaucracy. It doesn’t work that way.
Speed is a competitive advantage. That doesn’t mean recklessness. Moving fast without knowing where you’re going is just moving quickly in the wrong direction. Intentional speed is different. Here’s how it plays out: Question what needs questioning. Remove what doesn’t need to exist. Make the decision. Execute. Learn. Adjust. Move again.
Technology is making this increasingly important. AI is compressing the amount of time required to build, analyze, experiment, and execute. What once took a year might take months. What took months might take weeks. What took weeks might take days.
Yet many organizations try to run these technologies through management systems designed for a much slower world. That’s going to become a problem. When the underlying technology accelerates, but the organization doesn’t, the organization becomes the bottleneck.
People dramatically underestimate what they can accomplish in a month when they remove unnecessary friction.
The question isn’t simply, “How fast can we move?” It’s, “How much of what’s slowing us down actually needs to exist?
Bottom line: In the past, today, and in the future, speed is a competitive advantage. And the leader usually determines it. The leader’s speed determines the team’s speed.
