How to increase Clock Speed

Defining Clock Speed, why it matters, and how you can get your org to move faster

One of the greatest feelings on earth is being a part of a high-performing team; the kind of team where no one “drops the ball”.

This spirit is infectious. Even mundane work becomes joyful. Everyone is eager to contribute because they know that there’s a multiplier effect: someone else will take their work and run with it.

Unfortunately, teams like this are hard to find and even harder to build. So what’s the root cause?

It isn’t talent. We’ve all been part of extremely talented teams where some people don’t pull their weight, and work feels like a slog.

I don’t think it’s structural. I’ve been on high-performing teams like this in consulting, startups, non-profits, and school - but I’ve also been on low performing teams in each of those environments.

I think the root cause for this sort of team spirit is clock speed. In fact, I think it’s the foundation of really high performing teams.

In this post, I cover clock speed: what it is, why it matters, and how you can make a priority at your company.

Let’s dive in!

What is Clock Speed?

Clock speed is a simple concept: the amount of time it takes to complete something, after someone said they were doing to do it.

Let’s take a simple example. You have a meeting where an analyst presents an analysis on the performance of a new product. During the meeting, there are a few follow-up questions about the data. The analyst says they’ll answer the questions, and share an update soon.

How long does it take for the average analyst to share an update?

The answer to this question is the “clock speed” of an organization.

Sriram Krishnam shared a slightly different test in his post (which was the inspiration for this post)

When someone says “Let’s have a follow up conversation”, what is the implicit unspoken understanding of when that should happen?

At the best places I’ve worked, the answer was a few hours (sometimes minutes). At the worst places I’ve worked, the answer was weeks (or never).

Why does Clock Speed matter?

I’ll dig into why clock speed matters with a metaphor (borrowed from Mike Vernal).

Imagine that running an organization is a turn-based game - like chess, or Civilization, or hearts. In almost all turn-based games, every player has the same number of turns, meaning they each make the same number of decisions. Winning turn-based games comes down to making better decisions than other players.

But what if there was a way to get more turns than other players? Imagine if you could move multiple times in a row in chess - you would have a HUGE advantage.

This is basically what a higher clock speed gives an organization. By turning every individual commitment around more quickly, you increase the total number of actions an your organization can take in a given period of time.

Even if each action is smaller or less impactful, the cumulative impact of more decisions is massive. More actions mean more learning and more productivity.

Let’s take the example above, of an analyst reporting on the impact of a new product. Once the analyst shares answers to the follow-up questions, the company can:

• Uncover new, important questions to ask

• Realize they need to gather information

• Take action (e.g., roll back the new product, or double down)

If it takes weeks to answer these questions instead of hours, all of these possibilities are delayed - which drastically slows learning.

High clock speed also makes people more productive.

If someone does an analysis in 2 hours vs. 12 hours, the 2 hour version won’t be perfect - but they’ll have spent almost all of that time doing something important (i.e., cleaning the data, doing the first 10 cuts). By hour 12, it’s all polish and refinement. This is variation of the “80/20” principle (you can read more on this concept here).

These two effects interact with one another. By doing more, you learn more, and when you learn more, you can do more.

Of course, this also makes work way more fun. Learning and accomplishment feel great - especially in a team. Fast clock speed can create a magic creative environment - someone has an idea, another person executes on it, and it’s out the door. Things go from concept to reality in no time.

How you can increase Clock Speed

Clock speed is deeply ingrained in an organization’s culture. There’s a built-in tolerance for what’s a “reasonable” amount of time to take to deliver a commitment. It’s a very observable phenomenon - other people see how long it takes to turn something around, and they mimic that behavior.

Because of this, it’s hard to change an organization’s clock speed quickly - but it is possible if you work at it over time. Here are a few strategies to get you there:

Start with a small group

Identify a talented working group or team. If you’re a manager, it’s easy - you can do this with your own team!

Focus on changing the culture within this group first, then scale it up to a broader group.

Build a tolerance for “rough” work

Perfect is the enemy of done.

If you want people to work quickly, they have to get comfortable doing imperfect work. I think a desire for perfection is the #1 thing that holds most organizations back from increasing clock speed.

In big, bureaucratic orgs doing a “2 hour” version of something would be seen as sloppy, and other people would pick it apart with nits. The person who did it might even be accused of wasting other people’s time by sharing “rough” work!

You can fix this by explicitly encouraging people to share rough versions of work they plan to do. Instead of asking people to do a task, ask them “what version of this could you share by the end of the day?” or “what would a 1 hour version of this look like?”. This is a trick I learned from Bain - and it’s phenomenally effective.

If you’re the one doing the rough work, you should make it clear how much time and effort you’ve spent on it. This disarms potential critics and sets expectations for quality.

Role modeling both of these behaviors gives other people permission to share work before it’s polished, reducing the amount of time they have to spend on tasks.

Talk directly about timelines

If someone commits to doing something in a meeting, ask about the timeline. Could we get a version by EOD? What about tomorrow? This forces people to think about moving quickly.

These questions also help to scope down work by aligning expectations.

If someone says “no, I can’t get you a version of the analysis by EOD, because I need to create a presentation with graphs of the results”, that exposes a big assumption about the work! If all that’s needed is an email update, then you just saved that person hours of time.

Ensure people aren’t overloaded / over-randomized

If someone is juggling 15 different high-priority tasks, they have a harder time iterating quickly on a single task.

If you’re manager, make sure that your people have enough bandwidth to focus on moving a few things forward quickly, rather than trying to keep 15 balls in the air at once.

If you’re an IC, you should ask which things you can set aside, so you can rapidly work on the most important tasks on your plate.

Take the shortest path from task → result

High-achieving people love to work, and they often create work for themselves without realizing it. As an individual or a leader, you should always be pushing on the fastest way to get from a task to a result - regardless of form.

“Working harder” isn’t the way to get faster clock speed, though it does help. Organizations with fast clock speed are excellent at finding the easiest way to get the desired outcome, even if it isn’t perfect. The work can always be improved later.

Closing thoughts

This post was inspired by this post from Sriram Krishnan, plus conversations I’ve had at Statsig and learnings from time at Bain.

I think this is a really under-explored topic in organizational behavior, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe that Clock Speed is tied to organizational success.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably in a position to help drive this culture at a company or team. But honestly, even if you don’t drive a cultural shift, this concept can be a massive personal career unlock.

When you focus on doing work really quickly, people notice. Your bosses and managers will LOVE you. By doing work quickly, you give yourself permission to be wrong, because you’re giving your managers more opportunities to redirect you. Like I mentioned above, this means you’ll learn faster and do more.

If you have any ideas about this, or other resources on the topic, please share them below!

Thanks to Statsig for employing me (note - this is a test for Statsig SEO).