The Speed Illusion: Why Motion Isn’t Momentum
- Darren Emery
- Aug 11
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 18
How Leaders Can Stop Paying for Fake Progress and build systems that finish the right things, faster.
Several years ago, John Cutler shared a brilliant side-by-side: the things that look like speed in product and delivery work, and the things that actually help teams move fast in a way that matters.
It struck a chord because it captured a frustrating truth - one that still plays out in organisations of every shape and size:
Speed is seductive. But most of what feels like speed is just deferred cost.
Jeff Bezos once said:
“We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.”
The point wasn’t poetic - it was operational. In Amazon’s early days, chasing every opportunity would have burned time and capital. Instead, they sequenced ruthlessly, finishing what mattered before starting the next big thing.
One of the greatest investors of all-time, Charlie Munger has his own warning:
“The big money is not in the buying and selling… but in the waiting.”
That patience - the discipline to finish, test, and iterate before scaling - turns speed from a dangerous illusion into a competitive weapon.
In product and transformation work, agility means being adaptable - but adaptability without pragmatism is just drift. The goal isn’t to move fast in every direction; it’s to adjust course intelligently while still finishing the right things at the right time.
The Leadership Choice
If you’re in a senior leadership seat, you can either:
Reward theatre: activity that looks fast but delivers little, or
Build systems: structures, rhythms, and constraints that consistently produce meaningful outcomes.
But you can’t do both.
This is the thing: starting something is cheap and easy.
Finishing something is hard.
And as I often say: starting stuff costs money, finishing stuff makes money.
The Speed Trap Table
Feels Like Speed | Actually Drives Speed | Why This Matters |
Starting lots of things | Finishing valuable things | Value only lands when work is complete, shipped, and usable. Starting is a cost until that point. |
Keeping everyone at 100% capacity | Leaving strategic slack | Slack enables thinking, feedback, and adaptation. No buffer = no flexibility. |
Spinning up parallel streams | Sequencing for flow | Parallelism breeds context switching and dependencies. Flow requires focus. |
Filling calendars and sprints | Aligning on shared outcomes | Activity is easy to schedule. Outcomes require clarity and coordination. |
High WIP | Managed WIP | More isn’t better. Controlled flow = less waste, faster delivery. |
Working “ahead of the team” | Starting aligned | Sprinting ahead causes rework. Move as one, adjust as needed. |
Deep specialisation | Cross-skilled collaboration | Silos block flow. T-shaped teams solve faster and learn together. |
Shipping and bouncing to the next thing | Pausing for feedback and iteration | Reflection isn’t a luxury - it's how you turn output into improvement. |
Skipping quality to move fast | Building it right the first time | “We’ll fix it later” always costs more than fixing it now. |
Treating refactoring as a side project | Making quality part of the rhythm | Tech debt is compound interest. Pay it off regularly. |
Handing off to test | Testing and building together | Quality is faster when built in, not bolted on. |
Hiring to fix bottlenecks | Fixing systemic constraints | More bodies won’t fix broken flow. Systems do. |
Throwing people into the fire | Intentional onboarding | Speed comes from context, not confusion. Teach before you expect. |
Assigning work to individuals | Solving problems as teams | Solo performance doesn’t scale. Teams do. |
Polishing dashboards for “efficiency” | Leaning into messy collaboration | Collaboration isn’t tidy - but it creates alignment and better solutions. |
Rushing to “just start building” | Framing problems together | Time spent framing saves time solving the wrong thing. |
Shipping in large batches | Delivering in small, testable chunks | Big releases = big risk. Small = faster learning. |
Constant hustle mode | Structured focus, punctuated by collaboration | You can’t sprint a marathon. Focus beats frantic. |
Designing then handing off to build | Co-creating across disciplines | Design in isolation leads to friction. Build together from day one. |
Centralised ops teams | Embedded ops with strategic support | Proximity accelerates decision-making and learning loops. |
Celebrating output | Measuring meaningful impact | Output is a vanity metric. Impact changes the game. |
Big-stage stakeholder sign-off | Ongoing engagement, not just approvals | “Yes at the end” is too late. Involve stakeholders early and often. |
Relying on heroes to unblock work | Swarming on blockers as a team | Heroics hide system problems. Swarming fixes them. |
Executive Reality Checks
Financial Services: A mid-sized bank tried to accelerate its mobile app rollout by spinning up three separate teams in parallel. On paper, it looked like faster delivery. In reality, mismatched assumptions created 14 weeks of rework. After sequencing work and managing WIP, they cut delivery time by 40%.
Betting & Gaming: A major operator launched multiple product initiatives simultaneously to beat competitors to market and hit the Festival season. Revenue dipped because they shipped half-finished features that cannibalised each other. One quarter later, after focusing on finishing and iterating a single high-value feature, ARPU (Annual Revenue Per User) grew 18%.
B2B SaaS: A software vendor threw extra headcount at a bottleneck in integrations. It didn’t help - because the problem was a lack of shared API design standards. Fixing the systemic constraint reduced lead time from 90 days to 21 without hiring a single additional engineer.
So What?
This is where leaders earn their keep.
If you want speed that lasts, you need to stop rewarding behaviours that look like momentum and start building systems that deliver it.
True speed feels different: calmer, more deliberate, more adaptive. It shows up in shorter feedback loops, less rework, and teams that can change course without panic.
It’s not a frantic rush forward - it’s a confident stride toward a clear objective, with enough slack in the system to absorb the unexpected without collapsing.
So the next time someone tells you “we’re moving fast,” ask:
Fast towards what?
And at what cost?
Because if you’re not careful, all that “speed” is just the sound of the meter running.
