Prioritization is the Key to Fast Moving Teams

The key to moving quickly and delivering value as a team in a startup is ruthless prioritization.

It's the acceptance of the fact that there is only one pipe and you can only get so much through that pipe in a given amount of time. So with that constraint in mind, you better pick the most important thing to prioritize.

As a team leader not doing this ruthless focusing and prioritization well, along with clearly communicating it is the difference between a leader and team that is perceived as effective and fast moving compared to a leader and team that is ineffective and/or slow.

This is going to mean that you have to say no to things that aren't as high priority for your organization.

This came up as part of a conversation with a friend and colleague about what the gap was between an otherwise effective engineering lead that was struggling, and it boiled down to this:

Prioritization is the team lead's role, if you're gonna suffer heart attack, do that surgery, don't do the nose job.