Speed Is a Tactic, Not a Virtue

I was reading a post on Anthropic’s blog about AI product management, and the author talked about speed as if it’s a virtue. She never said why speed was supposed to be a good thing. She just assumed everybody wanted it. But should they?

Speed and scale get held up as goals, when they’re actually strategic choices. (I’ll address scale in a later post.) When AI lets everyone go fast, going fast isn’t an advantage — unless the way that you’re getting fast is getting smarter as a company faster than your competitors, or building a user base faster. Shipping code faster is a very temporary advantage.

OpenAI and Anthropic are racing each other for adoption by markets that move slowly: enterprise and general consumers. Speed is critical to their strategy because once these customers choose a company they’ll be locked in. They have to be the best model when people are shopping, and that moment starts now.

When model companies shout about how the entire world is changing and you’d better get on board or be left behind, what they’re really saying is “choose me.” The consultants and pundits echoing them also have something to sell you. “Move fast or die” is a great sales pitch, but it might not be the right strategy for you.

A better question is: how do you want to handle this technological shift? And when?

I’ve lived through the internet and mobile. I know a game-changer when I see one, and GenAI is one. But how much work will change, and for whom, is still genuinely open. When TV arrived, people put plays on it. When the web arrived, we put our brochures on it. Now we bank, talk, create. Right now we’re using AI to go faster and get cheaper. Fine. But we haven’t invented the new forms yet — the ones that could only exist because of AI.

You won’t find those by going faster. You’ll find them by thinking harder.

So what should you do? Everyone says you have to start using AI now or you’re doomed. Are you doomed?

You really aren’t. I felt late to the game when I started working on web products in ’98. As they say, “the best time to plant a tree is 50 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Now is an excellent time to start watching the GenAI industry and figure out what it means to your company. Go somewhere rural and beautiful for a week. A weekend at minimum. Read and walk a lot. Stay off LinkedIn. Do the research you actually need — primary sources, not posts about posts. Once you’ve fed your brain, head out for a long hike or walk on the beach. Write down any questions you come up with on paper, so you don’t get sucked back into the socials and email. Then think hard about your specific company and decide deliberately: where do you want to move fast, where should you move slowly and cautiously, and where should you wait and see?

It’s still early days. I don’t think we know yet what new capabilities GenAI will unlock. And you can’t think clearly about that while you’re sprinting.

The only thing you need to do fast right now is schedule time to think slowly.