Take the time to go fast

We live today under the tyranny of urgency.

Everything feels urgent: emails, meetings, decisions, crises.

We are caught in a constant flow of information, injunctions, notifications, a whirlwind that makes us feel like we are running without ever moving fast enough.

You know you are taking back control the moment you feel you are no longer in REACTION mode, but in ACTION mode.

When your decisions are no longer dictated by pressure, but aligned with a vision.

Breaking free from the tyranny of urgency

To stop feeling like waves are crashing over you one after another, you must lift your head regularly, look toward the horizon, and step out of the daily grind.

This ability to breathe, to refocus, to anticipate is not a luxury,

👉 it is a leadership skill.

👉 in fact, it is the first strategic capability.

Creating strategic breathing space, for yourself, for your company, for your teams, is an act of leadership. It creates clarity, serenity, and meaning. And your teams will thank you for it.

This tyranny of urgency is a form of “voluntary servitude”: we convince ourselves that everything must be done immediately, without time to consult, reflect, or build collectively.

At Activate Innovation, we always respond with the same principle:

👉 Take the time to go fast.

👉 Bring long-term thinking back into your company.

Creating long-term thinking: the 3 horizons

Thinking long-term means recognizing that strategic impact doesn’t only happen in day-to-day execution, but also in what is emerging and what weak signals reveal.

Long-term thinking means stepping out of the tyranny of the everyday and operating across multiple time horizons.

In permanent transformation, there are three essential horizons:

Horizon 1: Operational Excellence

Managing the day-to-day, serving customers, producing, delivering, keeping commitments.

This is the foundation of performance.

Horizon 2: Continuous Improvement

Asking how to do things better: optimizing, simplifying, digitalizing, professionalizing practices.

This is the time of active listening and steady progress.

Horizon 3: Questioning & Openness

Observing the world, understanding societal shifts, technological evolutions, changes in usage, capturing weak signals.

Asking: What if all of this reshaped our business, our value creation model?

This is the time for foresight, exploration, reinvention, and new business models.

A leader must operate across all 3 horizons.

If they focus only on Horizon 1, they endure.

If they focus only on Horizon 3, they dream.

Balanced across all 3, they build a resilient company capable of thinking, anticipating, and adapting without exhaustion.

This applies to all managers and every employee.

Structuring time to regain speed

When I was Managing Director of Somfy France, I structured every executive committee using this logic:

1/3 dedicated to Horizon 1

1/3 to Horizon 2

1/3 to Horizon 3

And I ensured that daily operations never occupied more than half of our collective time.

Because that is where everything shifts:

👉 when operational urgency crushes strategic thinking.

An agenda is, in reality, a strategic management act.

It expresses how you allocate time, and therefore how you direct collective energy.

Either you endure the tyranny of the short term,

or you create space for reflection and anticipation.

By balancing your schedule across the 3 horizons, you naturally rebalance your entire organization, giving it clarity, perspective, and the ability to make sound decisions.

This is what permanent transformation looks like:

a continuous, yet peaceful movement.

The key to speed is anticipation

We often confuse speed with haste.

But in business - as when driving - the key to speed is anticipation.

Those who anticipate don’t need to brake hard or accelerate wildly.

They adjust. They stay on course.

Creating long-term thinking means creating the conditions for anticipation:

• moments of collective reflection

• structured monitoring

• future scenarios

• spaces where questions can be raised before they become urgent.

This is what it means to take the time to go fast:

Not slowing down but acting with intention.

Not doing more but doing better, at the right moment.

“I don’t have time” : a dangerous illusion

We often hear business leaders say:

“In a small company, we have to do everything. We don’t have time for these topics — that’s for big corporations.”

To this we respond:

It’s not that you don’t have time

It’s that you don’t have the choice.

Even a single person running a company must spread their energy across:

a time to do,

a time to improve,

a time to imagine.

Failing to do this means being condemned to endure.

Doing it means becoming the actor of your own future.

Because the world is moving. Markets evolve. Technologies shift. AI, energy transition, new regulations, new usages…

If you don’t look at what’s coming,

in 18 months it may be the world telling you that you no longer have time.

Long-term thinking as the key to permanent transformation

Restoring long-term thinking means accepting that sustainable value is built over time.

It reconnects strategy with vision, daily execution with future possibilities, action with reflection.

It recreates a natural rhythm where each horizon feeds the others:

Operational reality fuels reflection,

Reflection guides action,

Vision gives meaning to the whole.

Taking the time to go fast is one of the greatest gifts you can offer your organization:

the gift of clarity, mastery, and confidence.

 “Take the time to go fast:

the key to speed is anticipation.”

ACTIVATE INNOVATION