Beth Viner

That's not how we do things here.

That's definitely not how you get to market first.

On one side, the process is foggy, and on the other, too rigid or prescriptive.

building speed bumps, well, that makes explicit a cadence or a process to an individual or a team.

And I believe that that creates better alignment among the humans around you.

But one caution.

If you build speed bumps one after another and you're really in a rush to get to your destination, well, you're definitely not going to get there on time.

Zero to one humans, it's not that they don't want to abide by your corporate protocols,

It's that they literally, and I've seen this firsthand, they literally cannot do the job you've tasked them with, building something that new, if they slow down for each and every speed bump along the way.

I'll never forget how one team tasked with new innovation and growth at a very large consumer products company

was also asked to meet with their innovation board on a monthly cadence.

Now, if you're a doer, that probably doesn't seem like a big deal.

But here's how it played out in practice.

During the first week,

they made the deck.

The second week, they took that deck, they shopped it around, walked the halls, aligned their stakeholders.

The third week, that was the meeting.

Then they had to take the feedback, incorporate it in, and change their plans, which left just one week, one week a month to do the work.

So build speed bumps.

Just don't build too many.