Slow Down to Speed Up: The Counter-Intuitive Path to Better Leadership
As a leader, your colleagues and employees expect you to be grounded. But leading a team can feel like you’re constantly falling forward, trying to grasp onto anything—a strategic plan, available resources, a consultant—to keep you from crashing to the ground. It can be extremely difficult to know what to do next, especially if you work in constantly shifting and hard-to-measure areas like inclusion or social impact.
Counter to what most work cultures encourage, there is a principle you can implement that will pay off tenfold (and stop the ground rushing towards your face): Slow down to speed up.
When the speed of business is 10,000 mph the inclination is to keep up. Move fast. Innovate. Deliver. But the most impactful and non-harmful work takes careful thoughtfulness and time. Through reduction in redos, backfills from frustrated employees leaving, and misalignments, spending concentrated time on that work now will pay off in the future. It's about what you're avoiding AND what you could gain.
Benefits of slowing down to speed up
When implemented well, deliberate slowness creates:
More thorough decision-making
Stronger alignment and commitment
Reduced waste from avoidable mistakes
Higher quality outputs
More sustainable team culture
Greater innovation through deeper thinking
Research shows that chronic urgency diminishes creativity and increases stress, leading to poorer outcomes across virtually all metrics that matter for long-term success. For example:
A landmark 2002 study analyzing over 9,000 diary entries from people working on creative projects found that time pressure consistently resulted in less creative outcomes, with researchers concluding that creativity under pressure "usually ends up getting killed."
Recent neuroscience research reveals that stress physically alters brain function, reducing activity in areas responsible for innovation while activating regions associated with habit and routine.
The "urgency trap" keeps us focused on immediate deliverables while the truly important work—relationship building, strategic thinking, and sustainable innovation—gets perpetually postponed.
How do you slow down when it's not the norm?
Make the Case: Convince stakeholders, bosses, or boards by providing long-term ROI opportunities/evaluation (qualitative or quantitative). Frame the conversation around value creation rather than delay. Show how thoughtful consideration now prevents costly mistakes in the future. Present relevant concrete examples where rushing led to failure, and where patience yielded superior results. Remind them that even Amazon didn't become a trillion-dollar company by rushing products to market – they systematically built infrastructure that could support massive scale, even when Wall Street analysts demanded faster growth.
Provide Social Proof: Share case studies of other, similar places it has worked.
For instance, companies like Patagonia and Microsoft provide such social proof. Both have intentionally slowed down certain business processes with remarkable results in customer loyalty and innovation.
Patagonia's deliberate approach in this realm has built extraordinary customer loyalty and reduced waste. Their focus on quality and durability has created a 56% customer retention rate, far exceeding industry standards, and their products retain 50-60% of their resale value even after years of use.
Microsoft's cultural shift under Satya Nadella prioritized thoughtful innovation over rushed releases, significantly improving product quality and market position. This careful, empathy-driven approach to product development helped Microsoft transform from a stagnating tech giant to a $3 trillion company with renewed relevance in critical emerging markets like cloud computing and AI.
Learn from Failures: Document where rushing has caused setbacks in your organization or field, and show how a more deliberate approach could have prevented these failures. Evidence of past failures, yours and others, is your most persuasive tool for changing future behavior.
Consider the Walker Art Center's controversial "Scaffold" installation in 2017, which represented several historical gallows, including the one used to hang 38 Dakota men in 1862. The museum rushed the installation without adequate consultation with Native American communities, resulting in intense protests, a highly publicized dismantling ceremony, and significant damage to community relationships that took years to repair. The failure stemmed from prioritizing a tight exhibition timeline over thorough stakeholder engagement.
More examples of these kinds of setbacks can be found in the museum field, where many institutions have similarly found that rushing through major decisions without adequate planning, community input, and stakeholder engagement leads to costly setbacks rather than efficiency gains.
Specificity is key when presenting learnings from past failures. Be precise about costs incurred, opportunities missed, and relationships damaged through hasty action. Establish realistic timelines for improvement through the "slow down" approach.
Quantify the Benefits: Create a simple spreadsheet that quantifies the financial impact of rushed mistakes. Include factors like recruitment costs for replacing burned-out staff, hours spent fixing preventable mistakes, missed income/donations, and opportunity costs of damaged stakeholder relationships. If your industry's average cost of replacing an employee is 1.5-2x their annual salary, and rushed projects increase turnover by just 10%, the financial impact is enormous. Add the cost of rework (typically 20-40% of project budgets), and the case becomes undeniable. Additionally, be sure to include the assumed costs saved by using the Slow Down Approach.
Build Coalitions: Begin one-on-one with a single person and convince them of the benefits of this approach so you have an ally for your next steps. This could be the friendliest person or the most skeptical but bonus points if skeptics trust them. This in-and-of-itself is a 'slow down to speed up’ tactic; taking the time to win over a key person will unlock a leap forward. Take the time to bring this person along.
Don't underestimate resistance from team members who have adapted to the frenetic pace. They may initially view slowing down as a threat to their identity or perceived value. The adrenaline rush of constant crisis can be addictive; many wear their exhaustion as a badge of honor. Invest in helping them understand how this approach ultimately creates more meaningful work and sustainable results. Share how Google's famous "20% time" policy—slowing down to give engineers time for side projects—produced Gmail, Google Maps, and other innovations that became core business drivers.
Take Initiative: If you're a leader, remember people look to you to set norms and for guidance on ways to work. Take the leap into intentional slowness and don't ask permission. When you deliberately pause before responding to the latest crisis, people will notice. And when you schedule thinking time on your calendar and protect it fiercely, others will follow suit. Your behavior sets the tempo for everyone around you.
What are we slowing down to achieve?
The goal isn't to move slowly forever, but to invest in thoughtfulness now to enable more effective acceleration later. Sometimes the fastest way forward is to pause, reflect, and then proceed with clarity and purpose.
This approach can transform:
Decision-making processes
Strategic planning
Team communication
Product development cycles
Crisis response protocols
In a world that celebrates speed, choosing to slow down requires courage. But this disciplined approach ultimately creates the conditions for sustainable success that rushed efforts rarely achieve. By deliberately building in time for thoughtful consideration, you're not actually slowing progress—you're creating the foundation for more meaningful, lasting impact.
Remember that true leadership isn't about appearing busy or reactive—it's about creating the conditions where good work can flourish. And sometimes, that means having the wisdom to slow down.
