Speed of Delivery - Part 2

The winning sell in running a small business is speed.

When I look at what separates small teams that grow from small teams that stall, it is rarely a single big idea. More often, it is how quickly they can move from idea to action, from question to answer, and from intention to delivery. Speed creates momentum, and momentum is hard to replicate once it is lost.

Creativity, response time, delivery, internal comms... all of these things have a drastic affect on revenue.

Creativity is not just having good ideas. It is the ability to generate options quickly, test them, and refine them without getting stuck in perfectionism. When creativity moves faster, you learn faster. You also avoid the slow drain that happens when good ideas sit in a notebook for months and never get a chance to become real.

Response time is often underestimated, but it shapes trust. If customers, partners, or even teammates feel like they are waiting on you, they start planning around you. That can quietly reduce opportunities. Faster responses do not need to be long or polished. Even a short message that sets expectations can keep work moving and relationships healthy.

Delivery is where speed becomes visible. It is the point where all the internal activity either turns into value or stays as effort. Faster delivery means shorter feedback loops, fewer assumptions, and fewer weeks spent building something no one wants. It also means you can stack wins, because each delivery becomes a platform for the next improvement.

Internal comms is the multiplier. A small business can do impressive work, but only if people are aligned. Clear, timely communication reduces rework, prevents duplicated effort, and stops small misunderstandings from turning into week long detours. Speed here is not about noise. It is about clarity arriving early enough to matter.

It isn't enough to just operate a business \"as we have always done\". Improving speed without sacrificing quality allows for more thoughtful decision making.

Habit is comfortable, but it can be expensive. The way you have always done things was designed for a different set of constraints, different customers, and a different stage of the business. If you do not regularly question the pace of your processes, you can end up treating delay as normal when it is actually avoidable.

The part that matters is the balance. Speed without quality becomes chaos. Quality without speed becomes stagnation. The sweet spot is building a rhythm where work moves quickly, but standards stay intact. That usually means simplifying steps, defining what good looks like, and choosing a small number of priorities that can actually be finished.

Counterintuitively, better speed can create more thoughtful decisions. When you reduce the time it takes to test an idea, you do not have to overthink it up front. You can make a reasonable call, ship a first version, and let real feedback guide the next step. That is not reckless. It is disciplined learning, repeated often.

If you want a practical starting point, look for bottlenecks that repeat. Where do approvals slow down. Where does work wait for a handoff. Where do people ask the same questions again and again. Fixing one recurring delay can often unlock an entire chain of faster delivery, and it does it without demanding longer hours.