Speed is almost always more important.

Speed is almost always more important than perfect. That is a hard thing to internalize because human nature pushes the other way - toward stability, analysis, and planning. In business, that instinct can cost you. You miss opportunities, lose months of momentum, arrive late to a market. Waiting for certainty is itself a choice, and often the wrong one.

Speed doesn’t mean things have to be hectic or that we accept low quality. It means we keep moving forward, focus on what matters, adjust quickly when needed, and act on what we can influence.

Most decisions are reversible. You can try something, see what happens, and change course. For these decisions, speed is clearly the right call. Extensive analysis is only justified for the few decisions that genuinely cannot be undone - where the stakes are high and the consequences permanent. Treat everything else as an experiment, not a commitment.

A bias for action means: don’t wait for permission. State what you’re planning to do. Then do it. This doesn’t mean acting without thought - it means not letting the pursuit of a better plan get in the way of any plan at all. A good decision made today beats a perfect decision made next month.

Sometimes the assumption is wrong and the experiment fails. That is expected. As long as we learn and adapt, failure is information, not defeat. If you never fail, you are not taking bold enough bets. If you always fail, it is time to learn from experience more carefully.

One distinction matters: we don’t celebrate failure. Trying something new and failing is fine - that is how experiments work. But repeating a mistake is a different thing entirely. When something we have done before turns into a disaster, that is not an experiment. That is bad execution. These operational failures are not okay.