The Cult of Speed
In many tech ecosystems—especially startups and emerging markets—there’s an obsession with speed:
- Launch fast.
- Ship MVPs.
- Impress investors.
- Capture market share now.
The result?
Shortcuts, fragile infrastructure, rushed decisions, and a mountain of “technical debt” buried beneath the product’s surface.
It’s called agility. But more often than not, it’s strategic laziness dressed as urgency.
“Speed is useful, but direction is essential.”
— Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
What Short-Term Thinking Looks Like in Practice
- Hiring for today’s fire, not tomorrow’s foundation.
- Prioritizing UI over system resilience.
- Ignoring process documentation until it breaks.
- Outsourcing critical architecture without long-term stewardship.
- Discarding user feedback because “we’ll fix it later.”
What starts as “lean” ends as leaky.
And leaders who chase short-term praise often inherit long-term pain.
“Short-term thinking is the enemy of systems. It creates wins today that collapse tomorrow.”
— Camille Fournier, author of “The Manager’s Path”
Build Fast, Fix Forever? Here’s What That Really Costs
Let’s be honest—sometimes speed is necessary. But speed without alignment is chaos in disguise.
What it costs:
- Endless rework that drains team morale
- Products that need rebuilding every year
- Infrastructure that can’t support real growth
- Customers who lose trust after every version update
- Talent that leaves because they’re tired of fixing messes
And ironically, all the “time saved” at the beginning is lost tenfold down the road.
“If you double the speed of building but halve the clarity of direction, you're not innovating. You're guessing faster.”
— Simon Sinek
In African Tech, the Stakes Are Higher
In resource-constrained environments like much of Africa, fragility is expensive.
If you build a fintech product that crashes under user load, you lose trust.
If you build an agri-tech platform that doesn’t work offline, you’ve failed context.
If you build a healthcare system with no interoperability, you’ve built a silo—not a solution.
We don’t have the luxury of waste. We must build with wisdom.
“Leaders need to shift from day-to-day heroics to long-term health. Scale requires stewardship, not sprints.”
— Jeff Bezos (paraphrased from shareholder letters)
The Mindset Shift Tech Leadership Needs
Here’s what sustainable leadership in tech looks like:
- Vision that extends beyond the next launch
- Investment in systems, not just features
- Hiring with retention, not just tasks, in mind
- Documentation as culture, not bureaucracy
- Clarity in what not to build
Leadership is not about speed. It’s about setting a pace that allows the team to keep up, innovate, and endure.
“Sustainable innovation isn’t about building fast. It’s about building what lasts.”
— Unknown, but we should own it.
Final Thought
Every shortcut taken today becomes someone’s full-time job tomorrow.
You can build fast and be proud of it—but only if you’ve also built smart, built with care, and built with the future in mind.
Don’t build it fast if you’re going to fix it forever.
Build it right, and maybe—just maybe—you won’t have to fix it at all.