Setting the Resting Heartbeat for Teams

Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, believes that establishing the right pace for your team is a fundamental leadership responsibility, especially when building products in rapidly evolving domains like AI.

The Resting Heartbeat Philosophy

Turley views his role not just as setting product direction, but as establishing the "resting heartbeat" for his teams—the default operating tempo that everyone calibrates to. This pace-setting function became critical at OpenAI, where the only way to discover what users truly value is through rapid iteration and real-world feedback.

"I always felt like part of my role here obviously was to think about the direction of the product, but also to just set the pace and the resting heartbeat for our teams," Turley explains. This metaphor captures how a team's velocity should feel natural and sustainable, yet maintain enough momentum to drive continuous progress.

"Is This Maximally Accelerated?"

This philosophy manifests in a practical question that became so common it turned into a company meme with its own Slack emoji: "Is this maximally accelerated?" Turley uses this question to cut through potential blockers and force critical path thinking:

"I just really want to jump to the punchline of 'why can't we do this now or why can't we do it tomorrow?' It's a good way to cut through a huge number of blockers with the team... As a thought exercise, if this was the most important thing and you wanted to truly maximally accelerate it, what would you do?"

The question doesn't mean always choosing the fastest path, but rather understanding what's truly on the critical path versus what can happen later. It creates clarity around priorities and trade-offs.

Speed as a Learning Tool in AI

For AI products specifically, Turley emphasizes that speed isn't just about competitive advantage—it's about learning what to build in the first place:

"You won't know what to polish until after you ship. This is uniquely true in an environment where the properties of your product are emergent and not knowable in advance."

This insight explains why ChatGPT shipped in just ten days after the decision was made. The team recognized they needed real-world feedback to understand what was valuable, rather than trying to perfect features based on assumptions.

Balancing Speed with Deliberate Process

Importantly, Turley doesn't apply this accelerated approach universally. He distinguishes between areas where speed creates learning advantages versus where deliberate process is essential:

"We use that [maximally accelerated approach] sparingly. There are some things where you don't want to accelerate as quickly as possible because you kind of want process. One of the areas where we have an immense amount of process is safety... if you believe in the exponential, which I do, you have to practice for a time where you really need the process."

This balanced perspective helps teams understand when to move quickly and when to slow down for careful consideration—a crucial distinction for leaders navigating high-stakes innovation.

Implications for Teams

For individual contributors, understanding this philosophy helps navigate the tension between speed and quality. When a leader asks "is this maximally accelerated?", they're not necessarily pushing for cutting corners, but rather:

1. Challenging assumptions about what's blocking progress
2. Forcing clarity on what's truly critical path
3. Creating permission to ship earlier and learn from real usage
4. Distinguishing between areas where speed creates advantage versus where careful process is essential

The key insight is recognizing that in domains with emergent properties like AI, the fastest path to quality often runs through rapid iteration rather than extended planning and perfection.