Systems ensure maximum speed
The growth gspot for businesses
If you want to go fast, usually people use the carrot and the stick. They either drive their teams hard to deliver and keep adding pressure; or they give bigger and bigger incentives linked to performance.
Both have their pros and cons. But everyone eventually runs into the hard limits of each. Increasing pressure creates unhealthy individuals and organisations. Carrots make people focused only on their own gain, while loosing focus on the work.
Both methods can ultimately only limit the speed and scale of your organisation.
The third way is to have a system that balances both these, ideally at an individual level. Some people need pressure to grow, others need praise. But the key factor here is that you build them up in alignment with the outcomes you need.
For example, if you want to grow into a huge company, it will never ever happen by thrashing people left & right into doing the work. Even if it does, it will never be sustainable. It will only happen when they feel there is trust and space for them to grow. Every company needs this Atleast with a core team of people. This is the subtle (or soft part of a system).
Recommend book: Radical Candor
Now imagine if you could create your incentive structures around this?