Know Enough to Start Moving


We wanted to simplify financial record keeping. Every feature support used to take six months. Planning took months. Implementation took months. Launch took months. It was too slow and too expensive. So an engineer and I teamed up to make it simpler. He was a deep diver. He wanted to understand every detail end to end before taking a single step. I didn’t realize that at first. We would agree on something, and then progress would freeze. He wasn’t sure about one detail. And because that detail was unclear, he couldn’t move.

I had to keep removing the ambiguity. Many times I was wrong. But the direction never changed. The big picture stayed the same. At one point I explained it this way: if you are going from Marina Beach in Chennai to India Gate in Delhi, you don’t need every turn mapped out on day one. You just need to know you’re going north. You tune the route as you travel. You correct as you learn. The map is allowed to change. And in fast-moving systems, it usually does.

Some decisions are one-way doors. Most are not. Most are reversible. Most can be fixed as you move. Waiting for 100% certainty slows the team and delays the outcome. When you know enough to move in the right direction, you should start. Tenet #6 — Move Fast: The Door Swings Both Ways. Progress depends on knowing which doors you can walk through without fear.

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