When Speed Stops Working
The skills that made you effective as a manager - pace, responsiveness, visible hustle - start working against you as a leader. What earned you the role becomes what holds you back.
This happens because most organisations run on loops. Sales cycles, product roadmaps, hiring funnels. Inside the loop, action feels urgent and rewarding. You chase late invoices, push a release, approve headcount. The feedback is instant. You look decisive, energetic, useful.
Step outside and the view changes. Why do invoices stall? What shapes release cadence? How does information really move between teams? These are structure questions - the kind that bend the whole system, not just this week’s results.
The problem is that stepping outside feels slower. It looks like less work. Your instincts scream to jump back in and fix things. But firefighting buys relief; system work builds resilience. The first feels good. The second endures.
Most managers stay in the loop because that’s where the dopamine is. The fires, the urgency, the visible wins. Leadership means holding your distance long enough to see why the same fires keep starting. Not what the numbers say this month, but how the system produces them in the first place.
The discipline isn’t abandoning the loop - it’s knowing when to step out. Close enough to feel the heat; far enough to redesign what’s breaking.
When your team escalates a decision to you, ask why it reached you. When a project slips, ask what made the timeline plausible in the first place. When someone says “this is how we’ve always done it”, ask what would have to change to do it differently.
These questions feel slow. They don’t resolve the immediate problem. But they surface the structural issues that keep creating problems. Each time you ask them, you’re practicing stepping outside the loop whilst staying connected to reality.
Look at your calendar this week. How much time is spent inside the loop - reacting, approving, unblocking? How much is spent outside - asking why, redesigning processes, changing the conditions that create the work?
If it’s all inside, you’re managing. Leadership happens when you step out long enough to see the pattern, then change it.
Related: The Identity Constraint · What Looks Like Instinct · Reading Guide