Go Slow to Go Fast: The Hard Lesson That Changed How I Lead

Brandon Stapleton
Feb 20
2 min read

Early in my leadership career, I believed speed was the advantage. Move fast. Execute faster. Figure it out along the way.

Then I led an initiative that should have been a home run — strong team, clear mandate, executive visibility. We launched quickly to show momentum. Within weeks, the cracks showed:

Stakeholders weren’t aligned
Dependencies were missed
Teams interpreted the goals differently
Firefighting replaced execution

What we thought would take 90 days took nine months. We didn’t fail because of capability. We failed because we skipped the uncomfortable work of planning.

That experience permanently changed how I lead.

The Leadership Lie About Speed

There’s a quiet pressure in organizations to look decisive rather than be deliberate.

But the leaders and organizations that consistently deliver understand something counterintuitive: Speed at the beginning often creates slowness at the end.

Those with a military background understood this through the principle commonly known as the “7 P’s” — Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. The concept emerged from World War II training doctrine and became a standard for operational readiness because the stakes demanded it.

In business, the stakes are different, but the consequences are real:

Missed targets
Burned out teams
Lost credibility
Strategy fatigue

What “Going Slow to Go Fast” Actually Means

It doesn’t mean analysis paralysis. It means intentional preparation in the places that determine success:

Alignment before action: If leaders aren’t aligned, execution becomes negotiation
Clarity before commitment: If success isn’t clearly defined, teams create their own definitions
Design before deployment: If governance and communication aren’t engineered, chaos fills the gap

When those three things are in place, execution accelerates on its own because friction disappears.

The Turning Point in My Leadership

After that painful initiative, I made a commitment. I would never again confuse urgency with effectiveness.

On the next major transformation I led, we slowed down first.

We pressure-tested assumptions
We mapped dependencies
We aligned stakeholders individually before collectively
We defined what success would actually look like

It felt uncomfortable at the time as if we weren’t “doing enough.” But when execution started, something different happened.

No scrambling
No surprises
No constant course corrections

We moved faster than any initiative I had led before because we had done the thinking upfront. That’s when it clicked..

*Strategic planning isn’t a delay - It’s an accelerator*

The Real Competitive Advantage

Most organizations don’t lose because of bad strategy. They lose because of rushed starts. Because they treat planning as overhead instead of as the foundation of execution. Because they underestimate how much alignment actually matters. The organizations that win consistently aren’t the fastest movers.

They’re the best preparers.