“Speed. I am speed.” – Lightning McQueen

I love speed. I like adrenaline-inducing sports of all kinds, but I especially love driving fast cars. I own a moderately fast car and find that a nice boost of acceleration and tight handling makes an ordinary commute, extraordinary.

My wife, Wendy, knows this about me, and has on few occasions, given me the opportunity to drive an exotic car for my birthday. A few years ago, I drove a Lamborghini Gallardo on a closed-course autocross track. While I waited for my turn, I watched countless drivers ahead of me drive the car like they were afraid of it. They gingerly navigated the course until their time was up.

When it was my turn, I talked to the instructor, who was in the passenger seat beside me. I told him that I wanted to push the car to the limit and get everything out of it. He told me this: “do exactly what I say. When I say ‘step on it,’ put it to the floor. When I say ‘brake,’ brake immediately and hard.”

I did what he said and experienced a thrill that literally took my breath away. We screamed through the course in a way that caused the people waiting in line to spontaneously cheer and start recording video on their cell phones. One of them shared their footage of my drive with me and I uploaded it here.

Driving my team like a rented Lamborghini

At work, I also like to go fast. I have a vision for the future and I want to be there this afternoon. I’ve written previously that I have absolutely no problem coming up with work for my team to do. It’s a never-ending flow.

I don’t like playing catch-up, but there’s always plenty of catch-up work to do. I want to get that behind us so we can focus on blazing the trails I know we need to blaze. We have so much potential to realize and we need to continually make progress against our strategic objectives.

Whew!

Those last two paragraphs probably make you a little nervous. Drive is a good leadership attribute. Speed is nice too. But what if I drive too hard and what if we go too fast? Then what? That sounds dangerous.

Drive as fast as you can, but no faster

I left a few facts off my original Lamborghini story, so let’s revisit it. Before I got in line for my turn to drive, I needed to read and sign a lengthy damage and liability waiver. I’ll summarize the agreement in two statements: “You break it, you buy it.” “You hurt yourself or anyone else, it’s your fault.”

Perhaps now it makes sense why everyone ahead of me in line was driving the Lamborghini like they were driving miss daisy.

Accountability

I recently read the book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. There are a lot of great leadership concepts in the book, but as the title indicates, the central theme is total accountability. When I sat down in the seat of the Lamborghini, I knew that I held complete responsibility for the safety of myself, those around me, and for the integrity of the very expensive vehicle I was driving. I was free to have some fun, but if there were any negative consequences to my actions, those were all on me.

There are three things I did in the Lamborghini that enabled me to go fast and stay safe:

1. Trust the vehicle: I knew I was driving a high-performance machine. I couldn’t have done what I did had I been driving a poorly maintained 1978 Buick LeSabre. In the Lamborghini, I knew the wide tires would grip, the suspension would hold, the steering would respond, and the brakes would grab.
2. Trust my skills: I’m not a professional or amateur race car driver, but I know how to drive a high-performance car without wrecking it.
3. Listen to instruction: If I have one good quality, it’s that I’m teachable. When there is someone trained and experienced by my side, who’s explicit purpose to help me succeed, I’m going to listen to what they have to say and act accordingly.

Back at work

I’m now going to translate these same concepts to the workplace in the context of driving my team:

1. Trust the vehicle: At work, this is more complex. I need to trust our technologies, our business partners, the organization we’ve built, and the processes we follow. All of these are being constantly tuned for optimal performance.
2. Trust my skills: I’ve been leading for a long time, and constantly invest in my own professional development. Just like in the driver’s seat of a car, I feel at home in a leadership position at work.
3. Listen to instruction: I do my best to constantly solicit input from a variety of sources. I hear from my team. I listen to the data. I consult industry analysts. I read the research. I listen to my customers. All of them have something to say, and I adjust accordingly.

I do the above with a strong sense of accountability. If I drive the team too hard and fast, I will damage the organization and could potentially impact safety, literally or figuratively. I live with the results of my actions and am ultimately accountable for the actions and sustainable health of the team I lead. That accountability keeps me in check.

The metaphor is complete. Over time, we’ve built an awesome team that performs like an exotic sports car. I get to sit in the driver’s seat and push the team to the limits, but no further. At the end of the day’s race, the organization is still in good condition, and the people remain safe and healthy.

Do you like to lead and drive fast? Please share this article with your colleagues.

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