Move slowly and keep things intact

Build a sustainable business.

Image created via Midjourney

For many years, Facebook (before it was Meta) used the internal motto "move fast and break things." In a 2009 interview with Business Insider, Mark Zuckerberg affirmed this business strategy by saying, "Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough." Many companies celebrated this mantra as innovative, disruptive, and bold. A necessary component on the path to greatness.

The people comfortable "breaking things" are often those who have little to lose. They don't personally feel the impact of destruction. They have little regard for the institutional knowledge that's often required to keep systems functional, and no regard for the people who might be harmed as a result.

As it turns out, "breaking things" isn't a flex. Instead, it has the exact impact it implies: causing things to fall apart. While reconfiguration is sometimes necessary to rebuild a system that's not working, carelessness and blinding speed are not the ways to get this done.