Most Teams Are Slow Because They’re Afraid to Be Wrong

One thing working at scale teaches you very quickly:

Most decisions are reversible.

And yet, many teams behave as if every decision is permanent. As if every choice needs absolute certainty.As if getting it wrong is more dangerous than not moving at all.

That mindset is one of the biggest hidden brakes on speed.

Scale doesn’t fail because of bad decisions

It fails because of decision fear

In large organizations, slowness is rarely caused by lack of intelligence, data, or talent.

It’s caused by fear.

Fear of:

• Being wrong in public

• Owning a decision that doesn’t work

• Having to explain a rollback

• Looking inconsistent

So decisions get over-analyzed.Decks get bigger.Stakeholders multiply.Timelines stretch.

Ironically, all of this happens in the name of “quality.”

But the real cost is momentum.

Not all decisions deserve the same weight

One of the most important leadership skills you develop at scale is learning to separate decisions into two buckets:

1. Irreversible decisions

These are the ones that are hard, expensive, or impossible to undo:

• Long-term contracts

• Major architectural choices

• Brand promises that redefine trust

• Regulatory or compliance commitments

These decisions deserve rigor.They require debate.They benefit from slowing down a bit.

2. Reversible decisions

Most product, marketing, and operational decisions fall here:

• Feature experiments

• Messaging

• Pricing tests

• Channel choices

• Process tweaks

• Team rituals

If it doesn’t work, you adjust.If it underperforms, you roll it back.If it’s wrong, you learn.

Treating these like irreversible bets is how organizations grind to a halt.

The danger of pretending everything is permanent

When teams treat reversible decisions as irreversible, a few things happen:

• Ownership disappears: People look for consensus instead of clarity.

• Speed collapses: Decisions wait for perfect information that never arrives.

• Learning stops: If you never ship, you never get feedback.

• Risk concentrates: Fewer decisions get made, but each one carries enormous pressure.

Ironically, this increases the cost of being wrong—because you’ve delayed learning for months.

Speed is not about being right

It’s about being less afraid of being wrong

High-performing teams don’t win because they’re always correct.

They win because:

• They decide faster

• They test earlier

• They correct sooner

They assume they’ll be wrong sometimes—and design for it.

That’s a very different leadership posture.

Instead of asking:“Are we 100% sure?”

They ask:“What would we need to learn to know if this works?”

Instead of:“What if this fails?”

They ask:“How fast can we tell if this is failing?”

That shift alone can unlock enormous velocity.

Leadership is decision framing, not decision making

Senior leaders often think their job is to make the right call.

In reality, their job is to frame decisions correctly.

To say:

• “This is reversible. Move fast.”

• “This one is hard to undo. Let’s slow down.”

• “We’ll treat this as an experiment.”

• “We’re buying learning, not certainty.”

When leaders do this explicitly, something powerful happens:

• Teams feel safer acting

• Ownership increases

• Momentum returns

People stop optimizing for not being blamed—and start optimizing for progress.

Psychological safety is a speed multiplier

You can’t talk about reversible decisions without talking about safety.

If being wrong is punished, teams will behave as if every decision is irreversible.

If leaders only reward perfect outcomes, people will wait.If leaders punish course-correction, people will hide mistakes.

Speed comes from a culture where:

• Changing your mind is seen as learning

• Reversals are treated as signals, not failures

• Data updates decisions, instead of defending them

This is less about process—and more about behavior at the top.

A simple question that changes everything

When a discussion starts to drag, I often come back to one question:

“What’s the cost of being wrong here?”

Not emotionally.Not politically.But practically.

If the answer is:“Low—we can revert in two weeks,”then the decision shouldn’t take two months.

If the answer is:“High—this locks us in for years,”then yes, slow down.

Clarity creates speed.

The real takeaway

Most organizations don’t need better strategy.They need better decision hygiene.

They need to stop treating every choice like it’s carved in stone.

Because progress doesn’t come from avoiding mistakes.It comes from making them cheap, fast, and informative.

Speed isn’t about being reckless.And it’s definitely not about being right all the time.

Speed comes from knowing which decisions matter forever—and which ones are just the next step.