# Jimism #003: The Governance of Speed
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## Article Content
Are we moving fast enough? is now a governance question. For decades, boards were trained to ask sensible questions. Are we compliant? Are the controls working? Are we managing risk? Are we allocating capital properly? All still important. But there's another question that increasingly belongs beside them: Are we moving fast enough? Because governance systems were largely designed for a world in which change occurred at human speed. That world is disappearing. Cyber risks can develop in seconds. AI capabilities can change between board meetings. Competitors can launch entirely new products while an incumbent is still preparing the business case. Scientific breakthroughs can make an assumption underlying a five-year plan obsolete long before year two. The risk isn't simply making the wrong decision anymore. Sometimes the risk is taking too long to make the right one. Three implications for leadership: Decision latency is a risk metric. Measure how long it takes an organization to recognize something, decide what it means and act.Governance cadence must match operating cadence. Quarterly oversight cannot always govern machine-speed events.Speed needs guardrails, not handcuffs. Faster does not mean reckless. It means designing boundaries that allow people to move quickly without repeatedly asking permission. This is the uncomfortable new reality. A perfectly governed organization moving at half the speed of its market is not necessarily well governed. It might simply be governing its own decline. Governance used to be largely about preventing the organization from moving irresponsibly. Increasingly, it must also prevent the organization from moving irrelevantly slowly. That's the Governance of Speed. jimisms.jimcarroll.com

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/09/jimism-003-the-governance-of-speed/