Personal SLA Prevents Bottlenecks

Claire Vo believes that leaders should bring a startup mindset to larger organizations rather than imposing big-company processes. She focuses on maintaining high velocity while preserving quality by deliberately accelerating the natural pace of work.

At the core of Claire's leadership philosophy is the concept of "one click faster" - deliberately setting timelines that are one iteration faster than what feels comfortable. If something seems like it should take a year, challenge the team to do it in six months. If it feels like a quarterly goal, make it a monthly one. This deliberate acceleration creates momentum and raises expectations throughout the organization.

Claire rejects the tendency for organizations to default to the pace of their recurring meetings. She pushes teams to make decisions and take action based on what's actually needed rather than waiting for the next scheduled meeting. This prevents artificial calendar-driven delays from slowing progress.

For leaders, Claire emphasizes the importance of personal response time. She believes that a leader's personal service level agreement (SLA) directly impacts the entire organization's pace. When leaders respond quickly to requests, make decisions promptly, and avoid becoming bottlenecks, it enables everyone else to maintain momentum.

This approach requires being explicit about expectations. Claire communicates clearly to her leadership team that she expects them to look for opportunities to accelerate timelines, and they in turn cascade this expectation throughout the organization. The result is a culture where people naturally challenge themselves to move faster.

For individual contributors, this means recognizing when meeting cadences are artificially slowing work down. Instead of defaulting to "we'll discuss this at next week's meeting," consider what's actually needed to make progress now. When proposing timelines, challenge yourself to compress them by one iteration, focusing on what could realistically be accomplished with greater urgency.

Claire's philosophy isn't about rushing or cutting corners - she maintains a high bar for quality in both talent and product. Rather, it's about removing artificial constraints and creating a culture that values momentum and decisive action over perfect but delayed execution. As she puts it, "Fast beats right" - making decisions and executing with conviction consistently outperforms endless deliberation in search of the perfect solution.