The biggest determinant for success in a technology company is the speed at which it operates and learns – the “clock speed” to use a CPU analogy. The easiest external measure for this is how fast you ship product. However, I’ve come to realize that is often hard to measure or hard to accomplish. You can’t ship hardware every week or make research breakthroughs every day.

I have come to realize there is often a simpler cultural test that one can apply which is the following.

When someone says “Let’s have a follow up conversation”, what is the implicit unspoken understanding of when that should happen? What will be considered early, appropriate and late in a way that violates cultural norms?

In companies I’ve been at, that has ranged from a few hours to the next day to the next week to …perhaps never. This little test usually tells me a lot about how fast your organization/company works.