Brake or Accelerate?

Things move fast. Sometimes, too fast. When we feel they're moving too fast, our natural inclination is often to try and slow things down. Put to brakes on, as it were.

But bosses often don't like to slow things down - they like to speed them up. They say things like, "The best way to get something done is to finish it," and "In the time it's taking to explain 'why not' you could already be halfway through getting it done."

In times like these, spending time on justifying why a slow-down makes sense may not make sense. A much more powerful conversation would be to discuss what you need so that you can move at a faster pace. In my 4qtr2005 edition of the Not Just Talk! newsletter the feature article was titled, Helping Bosses Help. I suggested that bosses are able to help in four ways:

1. by providing you with ADDITIONAL TIME
2. by providing you with ADDITIONAL MONIES
3. by providing you with ADDITIONAL NON-MONETARY RESOURCES
4. by providing you with ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.

If the goal is to speed things up, consider which of these four ways would help you accelerate results and then ask for exactly that. Well actually, ask for more than exactly that. Why? Two reasons, really.

Reason One - You've probably underestimated how much ADDITIONAL WHATEVER you probably need; and

Reason Two - If you're given exactly what you ask for, you don't want to have to go back later to say that it wasn't enough.

If the issue truly is as important as your boss says it is, you really DO need to be able to answer the question "What do I need so that I CAN accelerate the completion of this work effort?" With this added information, your boss can decide how important the timeline for the assignment really is.