Don’t Go Slow to Go Fast

"The most important thing you can do to achieve your goals is to make sure that as soon as you set them, you immediately begin to create momentum." — Tony Robbins

A common slogan in school improvement is "go slow to go fast." The idea is well-intentioned -  don’t overwhelm staff by taking on too much at once. However, in practice, this mindset often leads to stagnation, where change is so slow that momentum never builds, and initiatives fail before they ever manage to gain traction.

The Common Assumption: Many school leaders interpret "go slow to go fast" as a directive to implement changes at an overly cautious pace, believing that thorough planning and slow rollout will lead to lasting improvements. For instance, a school focusing on Teacher Clarity—a concept from John Hattie's research—may spend an entire year just getting teachers to write objectives on the board, assuming that a methodical approach will lead to deep understanding. In reality, this single goal should not take a whole year, and regardless of its effectiveness, the slow change eliminates the opportunity for other initiatives and strategies to even begin.

A New Perspective: However, this slow pace prevents momentum from building. Instead, schools should implement small, visible changes quickly—such as ensuring objectives are posted—so that teachers can immediately experience early successes. Once these quick wins are in place, deeper work—like ensuring students understand success criteria—can follow. The key is to generate movement with quick wins and frequent small successes, which create engagement and foster ownership and commitment.

The Fallacy of Over-Caution

The different paths to school improvement can be visualized in three distinct trajectories.

1. The hoped-for change—a gradual improvement that accelerates toward the end as capacity builds. 

2. The rapid implementation model, which initially sees quick success but ultimately plateaus and even declines due to a lack of sustainability. 

3. The most effective is the steady improvement path. By implementing small, meaningful changes quickly and building upon them, schools create sustainable momentum that leads to long-term success.

While the intent behind "go slow to go fast" is to prevent overload, it often results in doing too little. Momentum is critical in school improvement. Without visible, meaningful progress, initiatives lose energy, and staff disengage. Research supports the idea that achieving small, quick wins builds the momentum necessary for sustained change.

Building Momentum Through Immediate Action

Consider a school struggling with student behavior. A "go slow to go fast" mindset might lead leaders to spend months designing a comprehensive behavior system before taking action. Meanwhile, disruptive behaviors continue unchecked. Instead, immediate implementation of simple strategies—such as greeting students at the door, ensuring hallway monitoring during passing periods, and establishing bell-ringer routines—can create quick wins that demonstrate improvement while the larger system is being developed.

Connecting to Early Adopters and Momentum

This approach ties into our previous discussion on early adopters and their role in school improvement. The quickest way to build momentum is to support those educators who are ready to move forward. Early adopters create the initial success stories that bring the early majority along, fostering widespread engagement and buy-in.

Conclusion

Careful planning is important, but it must be balanced with action. While it does take time to build capacity before we see significant results in lagging indicators like student achievement, we can and should expect to see improvements in leading indicators much sooner. Changes in teacher practices, for example, should show measurable progress early in the process. 

These early wins are critical—they ensure that practices are in place long enough to generate the long-term student achievement gains we seek. If we fail to gain momentum through these leading indicators, the work may stall before it ever has a chance to make an impact at the student level.