Why Pace and Time Need to be Carefully Planned to Enhance Efficiency and Success
In my business coaching sessions with leaders and organizational heads, one of the most frequent and pressing concerns is the disconnect in pace between leaders and their teams. This is inevitable. Teams consist of diverse personalities, leadership styles, varying levels of cohesion, competitiveness, access to resources, and a range of talents. Naturally, therefore, the pace of execution will vary both within and across teams. Organizational leaders expect execution at a uniform pace, and it often creates challenges—because such expectations may not align with the natural rhythm at which tasks can realistically be performed. A key role of leadership is to create harmony—a shared rhythm—among people working together. Indeed, for a leader to master the art of pace alignment within and between teams, self-awareness is the starting point. So, how can organizations speed up the pace without compromising on the efficiency and productivity of the team?
Reflection on Pace and Self-Awareness
To emphasize the power of self-awareness, let me share a personal experience.
Whenever I wake up early and complete my routine of meditation and physical exercise, I begin the day operating at a high pace. Operating in this “hypersonic” state disrupts my ability to stay aligned with my team. I get frustrated when things don’t move at my speed, and in my haste, I often miss vital information—creating further misalignment. Ironically, my push for “faster, faster, faster” results in slower outcomes.
I realized I inherited this habit from my father. On days he woke early, he’d spring into action, giving instructions and keeping everyone on their toes. That memory is deeply ingrained. On days I wake up late, I feel guilty—but I don’t impose that guilt on others and allow them to move at their own pace. Knowing this habit, I am now cautious when I sense my hypersonic state. Without awareness of this habit, I would continue to create distress for myself and my team. This applies to leaders and their teams as well; self-awareness, therefore, plays a vital role in figuring out how organizations can speed up.
Leadership Courses
“Every leader with people reporting to them must take extra responsibility to understand how their personal habits affect the team.” When leaders fail to reflect on how their personalities shape—or even distort—their organizational roles, execution shifts from a shared mission to a heavy burden. In the face of tight deadlines, financial pressures, or urgent deliverables, misalignment in pace can be costly in terms of time, energy, and money. Leaders may blame others or overexert themselves for minimal results.
Before getting into the details of how organizations can speed up, it’s important to understand why there is a mismatch between leaders and teams when it comes to pace.
1. Common Leadership Habits That Lead to a Pace Mismatch
- Leaders who delay initiating action, but once they do, expect the team to move at breakneck speed
- Leaders who jump from task to task, without acknowledging the time and effort needed to complete and sustain each one
Such unnoticed habits can damage team spirit. The saying “speed kills” doesn’t just apply to traffic—it’s equally valid for leadership situations. How organizations can speed up thus needs to be carefully considered.
2. Lack of Negotiation
Often, unrealistic timelines are committed without discussion. For instance, a business owner asks the sales head why sales are down. In response, the sales head promises a jump in sales in just three days. Without checking feasibility, he pressures his team to achieve the impossible. So, who’s at fault? All of them.
The business owner didn’t probe the plan. The sales head didn’t consult his team before committing to a deadline. As a result, the team couldn’t negotiate a more realistic timeline. The result: sales become a forced performance metric, rather than a strategic lever for innovation and competitive edge. This swiftness of pace is clearly antithetical to how organizations can speed up efficiently and harmoniously.
3. Fear to Voice Disagreements
Many leaders and team members are not vocal if they disagree with what team leaders say because they are afraid of upsetting the boss. This compromises the psychological safety required for realistic execution. Suppressing voices for the sake of belonging or approval leads to pace mismatch and organizational dysfunction.
4. No Alignment Across the Hierarchy
At the top, leaders can visualize and design blueprints rapidly. However, the middle management needs more time to execute those designs. And further down the chain, the field staff needs yet another rhythm to translate them into action. Without conscious pace alignment, leaders tend to push for outcomes—leading to resistance, burnout, and disengagement.
In such a scenario, there is the potential disharmony among the team, and an inevitable passing of the buck. For example, consider the following:
- A team leader will tell the executive: “When the manager calls, you’re answerable for the delay.”
- Higher up the chain, the manager might say to the team leader: “Because of your delay, I got a firing from my boss.”
- At the topmost level of the hierarchy, the CEO could tell the department heads: “I’m answerable to the board.”
These are signs that people are managing their managers rather than managing the context together.
How Organizations Can Speed Up: By Taking the Time Needed
Let me share a business coaching experience to illustrate the importance of allowing time for maturation. A company wanted to enhance counter sales across 1,000 franchise-led outlets. The sales head approached me to train 12 regional managers, armed with a PowerPoint-based training program.
From a coaching perspective, we saw the training was too content-heavy and lacked contextual relevance. So, we guided the 12 regional managers to observe two outlets each for 10 days. At the end of this period, they concluded that rather than content delivery, role play and situational learning would be more effective. We thus coached them to build a context for collaborative learning, using real outlet examples and scenario-based learning. As a result, the outlet staff absorbed and applied the concepts faster and more effectively.
One regional manager shared a successful example: A customer came to buy a birthday cake. The staff, trained in contextual sales, suggested pairing it with a slow-moving drink as a welcome beverage. The customer ordered 50 drinks—transforming an idea into a bulk sale.
Traditional training could have been delivered in three days while our coaching approach took eight days spread over four months. That extended period, however, allowed the managers to internalize and apply what they learned. The natural pace of maturation required that time. How organizations can speed up, therefore, is not really a question of just doing things quickly. It is a matter of doing them most efficiently.
Breaking the Pace-Mismatch Cycle
Through business coaching, we can break the cycle of pace mismatch and align teams in a way that there is a healthy rhythm and pace. We can approach execution from two perspectives:
Before aligning execution, align the minds. A coach can facilitate this mental alignment. To do this, one key reflective question to ask is: “Why do we exist together?” This should be explored in three layers:
- Immediate responses: Spontaneous reflections from the team.
- One-week deep dive: Revisit the question after reflection and bring in deeper, shared insights.
- Application: Find out how to use this shared “why” to realize vision.
With aligned minds, the rhythm of execution naturally follows. Execution becomes collaborative when leaders and teams step back together to reflect on:
- Where was the pace aligned?
- Where did it break down?
They then realign resources and talents accordingly. This creates a loop of planning, acting, reviewing, and course-correcting—grounded in both subjective experience and objective data. Bringing people together to align minds and pace is often seen as unproductive. But failing to do so results in misfiring initiatives, frustrated teams, and missed outcomes. Remember: Fail to align your managers’ mindset and execution pace, and your organization won’t just fall behind—it may be out of the race entirely.
How organizations can speed up, then, is not simply about doing things faster. It is, above all, doing things better.
NOTE: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Emeritus.
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