If you want to move fast you need to build trust. At the beginning of their wonderful book, Move fast & fix things, Frances Frei & Anne Morriss make a very simple but powerful point: Trust and Speed are a powerful combination but without trust, higher and higher speed becomes reckless. They encourage product teams and companies to build higher levels of trust with stakeholders to create even stronger organisations that can move fast and solve hard problems
They illustrate the relationship between trust and speed with the FIX map
The FIX map can help you locate where your team or organisation are currently and then chart a course forward. The quadrants are: inevitable decline, reckless disruption, responsible stewardship, and accelerating excellence. Each quadrant has different cultural attributes:
Inevitable decline
- Diminishing stakeholder value
- Transactional culture
- High employee cynicism
Reckless disruption
- High innovation
- Stakeholder churn
- “Us” and “them” thinking
- High employee anxiety
Responsible stewardship
- Past orientation
- Consensus decision-making
- High employee comfort
Accelerating excellence
- Rising stakeholder value
- Balanced culture of creativity + achievement
- High employee confidence and energy
The upper right quadrant (Accelerating excellence) is a difficult place to get to, but it is not impossible. Even teams that feel stuck in the lower left quadrant (Inevitable decline) can find hope by building trust. As with most things, there are no silver bullets that unlock trust instantaneously. However, the time spent building trust between team members, departments, and stakeholders yields value and enables moving faster
It is far more likely that you and your organisation fall into the upper left or lower right quadrants. You may feel comfortable but stuck, or you may be moving so fast that your head is spinning and you are in conflict with other departments or stakeholders
It is valuable to reflect on where trust gaps might exist within your organisation and take action to fill them in. Trust is earned and it must be maintained