Go Slow to Go Fast

Go Slow to Go Fast

Why discovery is the most underestimated (and most critical) phase in enterprise transformation

Most executive teams start under pressure: to realize ROI, to show progress, and to avoid headlines like "failed implementation" or "overbudget system overhaul."

So they do what feels right in the moment: they move fast. They greenlight the vendor, pin up the implementation, and kick off the change management workstream. 

But in all my years working with B2B executive teams, I’ve seen how moving fast without anchoring to purpose always leads to waste. And in transformation work, that waste is measured in rework, missed milestones, and lost credibility.

If you're not willing to slow down at the beginning, you'll slow down everywhere else.

The fix is simple, but not easy: go slow at the beginning, so you can go fast where it counts. 

Here’s what that looks like.

Discovery is where outcomes begin

Too often, discovery is treated like a formality, a way to collect requirements and check boxes. But discovery is so crucial because it’s about establishing your direction. It's where you:

• Define success (in business terms, not just system terms)
  

• Uncover the real drivers behind the project (not just the safe or surface-level ones)
  

• Establish baselines so you can measure whether change is actually happening
  

• Align stakeholders around what matters most (before you're in execution mode)
  

We often tell clients: if you can’t define success up front, you’re not ready to fund the project. Clarity isn’t optional. It’s the cost of admission.

The cost of skipping the hard questions

When discovery is rushed or skipped, the downstream effects ripple fast:

• The project team builds to the symptoms, not the root problem
  

• Executives disagree on what success looks like, but only realize it after go-live
  

• Key users disengage because the system doesn’t support how they actually work
  

• Metrics don’t move because no one agreed on what to measure in the first place
  

We’ve seen multi-million-dollar rollouts with impeccable configurations fail to drive value because the initial assumptions were wrong. And correcting course six months in is exponentially more painful than clarifying on day one.

Fast is fragile

Discovery feels slow because it forces hard conversations. It challenges assumptions. It can reveal conflict. But those slow conversations up front are what allow everything else to move faster, cleaner, and with fewer surprises.

We ask questions like:

• "What are you trying to make true that isn’t true today?"
  

• "What does success look like, and how will we know if we’re on track a year from now?"
  

• "What’s the real motivation for this change? Efficiency? Margin? Headcount? Strategy?"
  

• "Where are the political sensitivities that could slow us down later?"
  

These questions are clarity accelerants. They shape the architecture of the solution and the sequencing of the roadmap. Most importantly, they reduce ambiguity, which is the real project killer.

What discovery looks like in practice

Our discovery process isn't a one-size-fits-all checklist, so I won’t be able to give you all the answers here. I can tell you that your discovery needs to include a structured, human, and sometimes uncomfortable series of conversations designed to pull real answers to the surface.

That includes:

• Mapping stakeholders by influence, friction, and decision-making style
  

• Asking "why" five times to uncover true project intent. You want to increase efficiency? Why? To free up workload? Why? To reduce headcount? Now we’re getting somewhere.
  

• Identifying and documenting hidden constraints (like internal politics or technical debt)
  

• Aligning on success criteria before any system is designed or configured

The goal is to prevent misalignment from going unnoticed until it’s expensive, because no technology decision lives in a vacuum. Every system touches a dozen others. Every workflow crosses team boundaries. As Rich likes to say, discovery reveals the thigh bone that’s connected to the hip bone.

The bottom line

You don’t earn speed by skipping steps. You earn speed by asking better questions earlier. The best project sponsors understand this. They don’t rush into execution. They pause to get aligned, and then move with purpose.

So the next time you feel the urge to go fast, ask yourself: have we earned it yet?

If not, slow down. It’s the fastest thing you can do.