5 Keys to Embracing the Speed Wobbles of Leadership

May 10

Ever heard of speed wobbles?

It’s what happens when you’re going too fast on a skateboard and the wheels start to wobble the faster you go.

Here’s what NOT to do when you encounter speed wobbles… don’t fall off the skateboard… duh.

But when the inevitable wobble happens as a leader, when you’re carrying too much, moving too fast, or overwhelmed with decisions, here are the 5 keys to maintaining your balance and maybe even enjoying the ride.

#1 Take things seriously, not personally

A consistent trend I notice with folks that struggle with speed wobbles is constantly getting offended. This could be when one of their ideas are shut down, when they receive tough feedback, or even when someone does something they don’t like.

I think one of the best ways to do this is reframing how we look at problems. I’ve shared this image before but it’s too good not to reshare:

The idea being:

“I don’t disagree with YOU. I’m actually standing alongside you.

How do we tackle this issue together, and even if it’s disagreeing and committing, how we can approach this by taking our egos out of the equation.”

People who adopt this approach get to solutions so much faster, because they’re not getting into heated discussions about whose idea is best. They’re focused on which idea is best for the company.

#2 Stay 6 months ahead of growth

Another way to overcome speed wobbles is growing ahead of your ever-changing role requirements. I love John Maxwell’s law of the lid concept.

Most of the time, I find that growth and development is stifled because we’re either (a) not receiving feedback or (b) not sharing feedback.

Two action items here:

1) Ask for feedback, frequently. My favorite templates (which are in Leadr) are the T3B3 or ’the one thing’. If we don’t know, we can’t grow. So the best place to start is by asking people around us that we trust for honest feedback for how we can improve.

2) Offer feedback, kindly. At Leadr, we have a subpoint under one of our values: ‘we care enough to be candid’. Sometimes we don’t do this because we’re afraid that we’ll offend someone. But other times we don’t share it because we don’t have the words. I personally like some variation of:

Mind if I challenge you something?
I have some feedback that I’d like to share that I think will really help…

#3 You can get a lot done on a whiteboard

This is one I constantly have to pay attention to. Especially as grow.

Here’s a great quote from Dan Steinman on this idea:

“One of the most common mistakes startups make is that they tend to overcomplicate and overengineer things too early.

We're not a 200M company anymore (speaking of Pushpay).

The last thing we should be doing is overcomplicating systems, tools, processes etc.

Our greatest competitive advantage at this stage is our speed and agility.

It's going to have to change soon, so for as long as we can, be a Whiteboard Startup.”

I love that.

There really is so much we can accomplish on a whiteboard.

Now, that’s not to say that some problems are complex and require deep thought and planning. But it's certainly easy to fall into the trap of over-engineering a solution with cement that might be okay with just superglue.

#4 Live for inbox zero

I love this story about Tim Cook.

Cook is at work one day when an employee informs him about an urgent operations problem in China.

About a half-hour later, Cook looks up, sees that Khan is still in the room.

“Why are you still here?” he asks.

And Khan goes straight to the airport, flies to China, and solves it.

What blows my mind about this is that Apple was already 1 trillion (with a T) dollar company at this point.

How is it that one of the most successful companies in history has an urgency timeframe of ~30 mins and yet we’re okay with an inbox with multiple unread emails and slacks?

I truly believe that speed is the competitive advantage of a startup, and if we’re not fast then someone else is going to overtake us.

#5 If you don’t turn off, you won’t turn up

Before I came to Leadr, I took 6 months off from work because I was so burned out from my previous role. This isn’t something to be celebrated, but to be fixed.

Now to be clear, I think it’s great to strive for the opportunity where we CAN take 6 months off. But I don’t want it to get to a point where we HAVE to.

This requires us to build in daily disciplines and weekly habits that allows us to bring our best consistently.

Some of my practical ones are:

7 hours of sleep
1 book a week
Walking the dog with Kiasa twice a day, every day
Dinner with mates
Texas sun

We all need our own list of things that keep us on the straight and narrow. What’s yours?

Thanks for reading,

Matt Tresidder