Truth 54. Extreme pressure kills inspired performance

Faster! Better! Cheaper! Faster! Better! Cheaper!

Oh heck. Who are we kidding? Let’s go for what really counts. Faster! Faster! Faster! Faster! Come on, people, let’s mooooove!

Fast is good, right? Time is money. When you’re fast, you’re first to market. When you’re fast, you can use that extra time to come up with more new ideas that will bring you first to market (again) with products that your competitor hasn’t even thought of yet. Fast is lean, clean, sharp. Why, there’s even a business magazine named after fast. So it has to be good, right? Who would subscribe to Slow Company magazine?

And fast is fun. It’s a challenge that managers put before their employees every day to see if they can squeeze a little more productivity and performance out of those brains already laboring under ever-tightening deadlines. If time is money, speed is the game in which that money is won. But there’s just one problem: As a manager, when you’re playing with speed, you’re gambling with creativity, quality, accuracy, and performance. When you lose, it shows up in digits on the NYSE.

For most managers, fast is where it’s at. They think that creativity and productivity exercised under pressure will produce hard, sharp, clear diamonds of progress and competitiveness. But Harvard Business School researchers are discovering just the opposite. They have found that extreme pressure kills creativity and insightful thinking. The stress that comes from the modern fondness for fast usually results in lack of mental clarity, physical exhaustion, and even the death of passion for the project. People are the least creative when they are under time pressure.

Still, you’ve got goals to meet. And, as the manager, you have to find a way to inspire and motivate your team to work just beyond what they think might be their capacity—but do it in such as way that you don’t burn everyone out in the process:

• Keep your deadlines reasonable. Those circles under your employees’ eyes may not be for lack of vitamins or sunshine. They could be from lack of sleep and spirit. Your team isn’t a success if its members are meeting their deadlines but paying for the accomplishment with their health.

• Keep your deadlines real. If you become known as someone who puts artificial heat under your employees by unnecessarily accelerating your deadlines, you will lose all your clout to motivate your team. You will have lost that precious currency that can take you and your team anywhere: trust. If your management imposes absurd deadlines on you, with the expectation that hardship trickles downstream, stand up for your team and say no. Not every stretch goal or production challenge is worth the pain of the game.

• Give your employees the time and space they need to get the job done. If the work is so urgent that it demands the accelerated pace, it deserves prioritizing. Clear your employees’ desks of any other competing obligations until this deliverable is met. Cancel all regular meetings, scheduling only those that are essential to the urgent task at hand.

• Fully communicate the reasons why this project is so important and why its speed is essential. If you want your employees to commit their passion and energy to meeting insane deadlines, you owe them an explanation as to why. If they understand the urgency behind the mission, they’ll be able to take personal ownership of meeting that goal. Communication like this takes time, to be sure. But if you’re looking at this last point and thinking, “I don’t have time to walk my employees through the reasons why,” then you need to double-check whether there’s real urgency behind your request or if it’s just a habit of being in a hurry.

Real deadlines set and reinforce an atmosphere of trust and respect among your entire team (including you). But repeatedly applied pressure transforms your people into slaves of the clock or calendar rather than service providers to your customers.

The clock is your friend. Don’t fight it. And don’t make your people fight it either.