Three Key Ways to Operate with Velocity

In today’s world, the rate of change is increasing every day. Customer expectations are rising. New competitors are emerging. Any organization, big or small, faces a common challenge: what do we need to do to not just keep pace, but to excel and succeed by staying ahead of the curve? At Intuit, we realized that unless we changed the way we worked, we would not be able to deliver for our customers who depend on us. We had to operate with more velocity.

Velocity is the combination of direction and speed. It’s a way to work smarter, not harder. Whether you’re leading large teams or working for yourself, operating with velocity is how you can differentiate yourself by taking more swings, failing fast, and ultimately taking the actions needed to achieve business success.?

So how do you operate with more velocity? Like all things worth fighting for, it’s not easy and doesn’t happen overnight. Achieving velocity often means changing our mindset, and that takes commitment, practice, and hard work. Here are three of the key areas I’ve been focusing on, both for myself and with my team, as we work to increase velocity across the company.?

• Focus on velocity, not speed. Speed for speed’s sake isn't helpful. Speed needs direction to succeed. Once you have that direction, you can commit to moving fast. Sometimes, taking a swing—even if you fail—is better than taking no swing at all. Ask yourself what would happen if the approach doesn’t work. If it fails, try again–and learn from it. Create timelines and hold yourself accountable. Moving fast with direction is a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it.?

• Practice extreme ownership. The enemy of velocity is unresolved decisions that create churn. Having a velocity mindset is all about practicing extreme ownership and making decisions that enable velocity. When you see your team churning, don’t waste time or wait for someone else to fix it. Take it upon yourself to jump in, make the decisions, or escalate the issue to remove any roadblocks. When you see an unresolved issue slowing down? the team, ask yourself, “How can I be the problem solver?” Don’t deflect decisions. Don’t tolerate churn. Don’t let decisions hang out there unresolved. Speak up and be the person who says “I’ve got this” and finds the path forward to resolution.

• Embrace escalation. Even if you commit to extreme ownership, you still can’t make every decision yourself. There are hard decisions that you’ll come across for which you may not be sure what the right path forward is, or which might not be your decision to make because of who will be impacted. When that happens, and it will happen, that’s the time to escalate to the proper decision-makers. Too often we think of escalation as a bad word and feel that because we can’t make a decision ourselves, we have somehow failed. If you ever feel that way, consider this: escalation is an act of leadership. It is a way of practicing extreme ownership and not tolerating churn and is a key lever to moving with velocity.?

Operating with velocity is something that we can all focus on, regardless of the scale at which we’re working. It’s not always easy, but I’ve seen firsthand how important it can be in a world that’s accelerating each day. How can your team reach the velocity you need to achieve great things?