The Hidden Cost of Speed—Your Shot of Fearless Culture #403
Where change agents find their weekly dose of culture insights and exercises, one topic at a time.
I’ve been working with many clients lately who want the same thing: speed.
And they’re right. Markets change quickly. Competitors move faster. Your team needs to ship yesterday.
So leaders do what makes sense—they give teams more autonomy. They decentralize decisions. They remove bottlenecks. And step back.
But here’s the problem: Teams move faster, but often go in the wrong direction.
Autonomy alone can cause expensive chaos.
That’s how Alignment Debt starts to build—quietly, then painfully. Teams working out of sync, increased confusion, wasted work, and stalled projects.
Autonomy alone is not enough. Teams need more than permission to act; they need to own the outcome. They need to care about the big picture, not just their own part.
The formula for success?
Alignment + Ownership
Alignment gives teams a compass. It’s understanding where we’re heading (goals) and why (purpose).
Ownership is caring deeply about whether that action actually works for everyone. It’s autonomy plus accountability.
When you have speed without alignment, you get scattered energy. When you have autonomy without ownership, you get silos and finger-pointing.
But when you get both right, your team moves faster toward something that matters.
Explore this week’s newsletter:
My latest article → How to Move Faster Without Creating Alignment Debt
Exercises and resources to build alignment and ownership
Stay fearless, my friend.
Gustavo
In Case You Missed It
How to Make Decisions Asynchronously– And Avoid Yet Another Meeting
Ask Your Team This
What’s hindering your sense of ownership?
⚠️ Try This
Alignment Debt Audit
A) Identify 3-5 projects or decisions that felt “fast” but created chaos:
What went wrong?
What did you have to fix?
Why didn’t we identify this earlier?
B) Learn from this:
What could have prevented this?
Were decision rights unclear?
Were we optimizing for individual metrics over collective goals?
C) Identify one small practice to prevent this next time:
A 15-minute check-in with the affected team before launch.
A brief decision log that shows what was decided and why.
A “who needs to know” checklist for major decisions.
🍦 Feed Your Curiosity
Thinking, Fast and Slow (video)
Is Kniberg’s Aligned Autonomy matrix still relevant?
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Gustavo Razzetti
CEO, Fearless Culture