Urgency or Quality? Yes.
Sipping a butterscotch latte (yes, who drinks butterscotch lattes!?), for some reason two forces critical to success bounced into my thoughts. They’re each hard to define, and they often create a false choice that makes us believe we have to trade one off against the other.
I’m talking about urgency and quality.
“Move fast and break things.” That’s the Silicon Valley mantra.
“Be quick, but don’t hurry.” That’s how legendary UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden guided his teams.
So what do I say when someone asks whether it’s more important to go fast with urgency, or to move slower and keep the quality bar high?
My answer, without flinching, is one word: Yes.
There it is again, my favorite idea. Two things can be true.
Urgency
You gotta go fast if you’re a startup, there’s only so much time to figure things out before someone else does. And once you’ve taken that first dose of venture funding, the clock only moves faster when it comes to proving out something meaningful. This “success” could be reaching the vaunted state of “cash flow positive” where you’re now controlling your own destiny, or it could mean reaching a “proof point” like product-market fit that can unlock a next round of funding.
On a personal level, urgency matters too, but you get to define it on your own terms. You’re right out of college and still figuring things out, relax. You don’t need to “urgently” have it all mapped out from today until you cash your first social security check. Go slower and try some things out. Take some meetings where you walk out thinking “Well, that was a waste of time.” Actually, it wasn’t. It was another nugget of learning you get to use. It’s just another slice of your personal urgency. Taking the meeting is you acting with urgency. Skipping it is not.
Quality
You know quality when you see it and when you feel it. What’s harder is to assess what meets the quality bar in the eyes of others.
When you’re that fast-moving startup, you have less (some might argue “zero”) brand risk in putting out a crappy product or service in the name of moving fast. This ethos may never change, but that’s okay because it’s not about that first low-quality release, it’s about how quickly you turn feedback into quality. Every company gets a bucket of brand goodwill with its user/customer base, just don’t burn through all of it. And be sure you are achieving enough progress on the quality front to refill that bucket with your target base faster than you use it up. If you burn through it all, could that be the end of the road?
On the personal level, quality is your brand. How others judge the quality of your work product, your work ethic, and your teamwork all add up to fill your quality bucket. Doing your projects half-assed, not putting in the effort to get results (yes, a form of urgency), and working for yourself over the success of your company or organization all drain your quality bucket. Like the company that drains its goodwill bucket, if you completely empty your personal quality bucket you may find that your reputation precedes you the next time you’re interviewing for that new gig.
Peanut Butter and Jelly
Urgency and quality go together like peanut butter and jelly (or honey, if that’s your sandwich of choice).
Imagine moving fast, and breaking things, only so far as they help your company reach its ultimate quality destination. Stick to your vision and mission, and use these two statements to guide how well you’re serving your users/customers as you urgently move forward. Don’t take shortcuts, cheat, or over-index on what a competitor is doing or saying. And don’t overtax the goodwill you’ve built with your users/customers.
Likewise, set your personal urgency pace and keep the quality bar sufficiently high so you are recognized in the eyes of others in the way you want to be seen. This might be where you act quickly, but you also know when not to hurry as Coach Wooden advised. Do great, high-quality work. Always be proud of what you create, and leave a margin of error in there for “what can be done to make it better in the next revision.”
Do your best to prioritize and do the things that feel important and meaningful to you right now.
This is the best way to act urgently, not frenetically, and at the same time define quality based on how you help others versus measuring it solely on how it contributes to your personal wealth.
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