The Egg and Spoon race growth strategy

I had the thought the other day that growing a new business is a bit like running an egg and spoon race. Everyone wants to run as fast as possible but the danger of running too fast is that you drop the egg.  So judgement has to be used in order to maximize speed but prevent the set back of dropping the egg, or worse still breaking it.  So who is in the best position to judge the speed at which you can run?



This issue came up as I was asked to increase the complexity of our solutions in addition to the ongoing requirement to reduce the time to market.  Whilst the desire is understandable the lack of understanding or appreciation for what is practically achievable in the short term is what surprised me.  It is clearly important to evolve at a fast enough pace to make you competitive with the others in the race so I understand the natural instinct to take risks.  But it helps no one if the egg drops, therefore a sense of caution must prevail.


Ultimately this is a judgement call about how fast you need to run versus how fast you can do so without dropping the egg.  There is no magic answer or description you can convey which would describe the tipping point between optimizing speed and falling over.   Indeed if you watch an egg and spoon race the winner is rarely the first person out the blocks.

In business such a considered approach is essential.  You need to develop strategies that allow you to proceed faster but these must be targeted towards realistic goals and objectives.  Just because you want to go faster does not mean you can, particularly in the beginning, so it is important to map out your potential. Business is full of examples where companies rush a product out too fast.  Take for example Apples well-documented over-extension in 2008.  Yet in other markets launching a product before it is even ready seems to be part of the strategy e.g. Google Wave.

It is typically the business part of the organization that pushes for more and faster, as they should.  But ultimately it should be the role of operations to hold strong on what is realistic and achievable, as they are the ones holding the egg.   It is understandable that those in the crowd will cheer for more speed, but they are not the ones in control.   The problem is that until just before the egg falls everyone thinks you can run faster and so it takes an experienced hand to know when to push and when to slow.  This can often make it difficult to sell caution to less patient ears, at least without simply appearing unwilling. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention and there are always creative ways to increase productivity.  But this needs to be planned, not simply demanded.  Just because you want it to be so, does not make it so.