Move Fast and Fix Things
The Trusted Leader's Guide to Solving Hard Problems and Accelerating Change
Book Edition Details
Summary
In the high-stakes arena of modern business, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss challenge the notion that speed and care are mutually exclusive. With their transformative manifesto, "Move Fast and Fix Things," they dismantle the myth of collateral damage as a necessary evil for innovation. Drawing on experiences with trailblazers like Uber and WeWork, they present a five-step framework that combines rapid action with ethical leadership. This invigorating guide empowers leaders to tackle their most pressing challenges with confidence, fostering a culture where trust and excellence thrive in harmony. In just a week, redefine your organization's trajectory by aligning swift progress with sustained integrity, setting the stage for a future where everyone wins.
Introduction
In a world where organizations often choose between moving fast and taking care of people, you don't have to accept this false trade-off. The most effective leaders solve problems at an accelerated pace while simultaneously building trust with customers, employees, and stakeholders. They understand that speed without trust creates reckless disruption, while trust without speed leads to stagnant stewardship. But when you combine both elements strategically, you create what we call Accelerating Excellence - the sweet spot where organizations thrive at unprecedented rates. This transformation isn't theoretical. It's a practical, week-long journey that will fundamentally change how you approach leadership challenges. Whether you're stuck in patterns of slow decision-making or caught in cycles of breaking things while moving fast, the path forward requires a new framework. You'll learn to identify real problems quickly, build trust systematically, embrace inclusion as a competitive advantage, craft compelling change narratives, and execute with urgency while maintaining care for your people. The time for tentative leadership is over. The moment that matters most is now, and you have everything you need to begin this transformation immediately.
Identify Your Real Problem and Build Trust
The foundation of breakthrough leadership lies in your ability to distinguish between the symptoms that grab attention and the root problems that demand solutions. Most organizations waste precious energy fighting fires instead of preventing them, reacting to crises instead of addressing underlying issues. Real problem identification requires moving beyond surface-level complaints and diving deep into the systemic barriers that prevent your team from achieving excellence. When Michele Buck became CEO of Hershey's, she didn't accept the obvious narrative that the company simply needed better products. Instead, she assembled a nine-person team of mixed titles and levels to help diagnose what was really holding the organization back. Buck's selection criteria included comfort with change and risk, qualities that didn't necessarily align with her most senior people. She discovered that Hershey's real challenge wasn't product innovation but transformation into a "snacking powerhouse" in an increasingly competitive market. This deeper understanding enabled Buck to focus her team's energy on leveraging the company's greatest strengths while systematically addressing capability gaps. Rather than launching random improvement initiatives, she built a coalition of disruptive thinkers paired with outstanding operators who could turn insights into transformative action. The result was a focused, accelerated change process that delivered measurable results. To identify your real problem, start by choosing curiosity over judgment. Gather a diverse team of problem solvers who aren't impressed by hierarchy and can observe situations with fresh eyes. Ask tough questions about what's truly holding your organization back, and be prepared to discover that your initial assumptions might be wrong. The fastest path to solutions begins with ensuring you're solving the right problem.
Make New Friends Through Radical Inclusion
Inclusion isn't just a moral imperative - it's your secret weapon for solving problems faster and better than ever before. When you create conditions where people can bring their full selves to work, you unlock access to unique knowledge, perspectives, and capabilities that homogeneous teams simply cannot access. This isn't about political correctness or checking boxes; it's about winning through the strategic advantage of difference. The research is overwhelming: inclusive teams consistently outperform homogeneous ones across every meaningful metric. They make better decisions, drive more innovation, and adapt more quickly to changing conditions. But here's the catch - simply putting different people together doesn't automatically create these benefits. Without intentional inclusion, diverse teams often underperform due to what researchers call the "common information effect," where people focus only on shared knowledge and ignore unique insights. Kevin Nolan, CEO of GE Appliances, discovered this truth during his company's transformation. He found that diversity was uncomfortable and challenging, contrary to corporate training messages promising easy harmony. But he also learned that pushing through this discomfort generated significantly better results. His team learned to create psychological safety, celebrate unique contributions, and champion authenticity at the organizational level. The path to inclusion follows a clear progression: ensure everyone feels safe, help them feel welcome despite differences, celebrate their uniqueness as a source of strength, and finally champion inclusion as a competitive advantage throughout the organization. Each level builds on the previous one, creating a flywheel effect that accelerates trust and performance simultaneously. Start by surveying your team anonymously to understand where people currently experience inclusion, then systematically work to move everyone up the dial.
Tell Stories That Unleash Organizational Energy
Words have the power to change organizations by shaping the attitudes and beliefs of everyone inside them. The most effective change leaders understand that transformation begins with narrative - a compelling story that connects the organization's past, present, and future in a way that makes change feel both necessary and achievable. Without this story, even the best strategies remain trapped in leadership presentations rather than becoming lived reality. When Jon Legere transformed T-Mobile from a struggling wireless carrier into a serious industry player, he didn't just change products and processes - he changed the entire narrative. The company understood its transformation so deeply that it captured the essence in a single word: "un-carrier." Instead of trapping customers with confusing plans and hidden fees like the rest of the industry, T-Mobile became everything wireless companies weren't. This simple but profound story guided every decision and communication. The un-carrier narrative worked because it honored what was good about T-Mobile's past while honestly confronting industry problems, provided a clear mandate for change, and described a rigorous yet optimistic path forward. Legere and his team walked this talk with authentic consistency, from accessible language in their manifesto to the CEO's signature style of pairing business suits with T-shirts and sneakers. The story became a cultural force that employees could rally behind and customers could believe in. Your change story must follow a similar three-part structure: honor the past by acknowledging both achievements and mistakes, articulate why change is urgently needed with compelling evidence, and describe your path forward with both rigor and optimism. Then tell this story everywhere and repeatedly - far more often than feels necessary. Remember that meaningful change requires people to modify deeply held beliefs, and that only happens through consistent, authentic communication that demonstrates your commitment to both speed and care.
Go as Fast as You Can Without Breaking Things
The final element of transformation leadership is learning to execute with fierce urgency while building rather than destroying trust. This isn't about working longer hours or pressuring people to move faster; it's about systematically removing barriers to progress and empowering others to make decisions that matter. Speed becomes possible when you create the conditions for it through better systems, clearer priorities, and stronger relationships. General Martin Dempsey revolutionized the US Army's effectiveness by implementing "Mission Command" - a leadership approach that taught subordinates how to make decisions independently rather than waiting for orders. This empowerment strategy recognized that modern conditions change too quickly for traditional command-and-control structures. When leaders focus on teaching people how to think rather than what to do, organizations can respond to opportunities and challenges at unprecedented speed. The same principle applies in business contexts. Claire Hughes Johnson helped grow Stripe from fewer than 200 employees to more than 6,000 by systematically empowering others to execute without bottlenecks. She invested heavily in meeting preparation and structure, understanding that productive collaboration is the foundation of organizational velocity. Her approach included deputizing facilitators and note-takers, creating clear decision rights, and ensuring everyone could contribute their unique knowledge to collective outcomes. To achieve this level of speed, you must be willing to get out of the way by delegating meaningful decisions, dare to be bad at some things in order to excel at others, and create fast-track mechanisms for your most important priorities. You'll need to run better meetings, reduce work in process, and learn to lean into rather than avoid productive conflict. Most importantly, you must build a culture that treats time as the precious, non-renewable resource it truly is while never losing sight of the human relationships that make transformation possible.
Summary
The path to leadership excellence doesn't require choosing between speed and care, between results and relationships, between individual achievement and collective success. The most effective leaders create organizations where trust and velocity reinforce each other in an accelerating cycle of improvement. As this framework demonstrates, "There is such a thing as being too late" - but there's also such a thing as moving fast enough to fix the things that matter most. The transformation begins the moment you decide that existing conditions are no longer acceptable and that tomorrow must be better than today. Start immediately by identifying one real problem that's holding your organization back, then build trust by running smart experiments, embrace inclusion as your competitive advantage, craft a compelling change narrative, and execute with the fierce urgency of now. Your mission isn't to fix everything at once, but to convince yourself and those around you that everything is fixable when you approach challenges with both ambition and care.
Related Books
Download PDF & EPUB
To save this Black List summary for later, download the free PDF and EPUB. You can print it out, or read offline at your convenience.
By Frances Frei
