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Move Fast and Fix Things
A review of

Move Fast and Fix Things

The Trusted Leader's Guide to Solving Hard Problems

Frances Frei and Anne Morriss • Harvard Business Review Press • 2023
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Productive Change

by David Meyer

Focus on excellence (and fast!) and effective change management.

In its early days, Facebook popularized the evocative phrase “move fast and break things.” This suggests that a company can’t innovate or progress without causing damage, and it implies that progress, by its nature, is destructive. Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei and Leadership Consortium founder Anne Morriss — also the co-authors of Uncommon Service and Unleashed — disagree with that ethos. They argue that great leaders move expeditiously into the future and fix problems as they earn their people’s trust. Speed is good; destruction is not.

Repair things

Good leaders move fast while striving to make repairs. They take responsibility for their customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders. Thus, the authors say, the appropriate slogan for an innovative 21st-century company is “move fast and fix things.” Leaders must move forward with “accelerating excellence,” constantly raising their company’s value for everyone.

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