Narrator: In its early days, Facebook operated under a now-famous motto, plastered on posters across its campus: "Move fast and break things." It was a mantra that captured the spirit of an era, a belief that rapid innovation justified a certain amount of collateral damage. But as the company, now Meta, matured, the "broken things"—from privacy scandals to societal trust—piled up. A decade later, the company's internal value shifted to "Moving fast together." This evolution from breaking things to fixing them highlights a central tension in modern leadership: How can organizations be both fast and responsible? Is it possible to accelerate progress without sacrificing the well-being of people and the stability of the organization?

In their book, Move Fast & Fix Things, leadership experts Frances Frei and Anne Morriss argue that this is not only possible but essential. They dismantle the false dichotomy between speed and care, presenting a practical playbook for leaders who want to solve hard problems quickly while simultaneously building the deep, resilient trust required to make change last.

Narrator: The foundational premise of the book is that the trade-off between speed and taking care of people is a dangerous myth. Many leaders believe that to make rapid progress, they must push their teams to the brink, cut corners, and accept a certain level of disruption. Frei and Morriss argue that the most effective leaders do the opposite. They invest in building trust just as much as they invest in building speed.

To help leaders diagnose their organization's health, they introduce the FIX map, a simple quadrant based on two axes: speed and trust. * Inevitable Decline: Low speed and low trust. These organizations are stagnant and fractured. * Reckless Disruption: High speed but low trust. This is the "move fast and break things" quadrant, where innovation comes at the cost of people and stability, leading to burnout and scandal. * Responsible Stewardship: Low speed but high trust. These organizations are beloved and stable but are often too slow to adapt, risking irrelevance. * Accelerating Excellence: High speed and high trust. This is the goal, where an organization's energy is unleashed by its pace, and its stakeholders are eager to come along for the ride because they trust the direction.

As the authors put it, "Speed unleashes your organization’s energy and reveals where you’re going. Trust convinces your stakeholders to come along for the ride." The rest of the book provides a five-day playbook to move any organization toward Accelerating Excellence.

Narrator: The first step in fixing things fast is to correctly identify the problem. This requires leaders to choose curiosity over defensiveness and to assemble a diverse team capable of challenging assumptions. The authors tell the story of Michele Buck, the CEO of Hershey's, who aimed to transform the company into a "snacking powerhouse."

Instead of relying only on her most senior leaders, who might be resistant to change, Buck created a special team of nine people with mixed titles and levels. She didn't pick them for their rank but for their comfort with change and risk. This team of "disruptive thinkers" was tasked with diagnosing the real problems holding Hershey's back. Crucially, Buck paired them with "outstanding operators"—people who could turn the team's disruptive ideas into concrete projects. This approach ensured that the diagnosis was both radical and actionable, preventing the company from solving the wrong problems.

Narrator: With a problem identified, the next step is to solve for trust. The authors break trust down into three core components: authenticity, empathy, and logic. A "trust wobble" occurs when one of these pillars is weak. * Authenticity: People believe they are interacting with the real you. * Logic: People have faith in your judgment and competence. * Empathy: People believe you care about them.

To illustrate how to build a culture of trust, particularly authenticity, the book points to NerdWallet, the personal finance company. The company maintains a prominent "Fail Wall" in its office, where employees, including the CEO, post sticky notes detailing their mistakes. This public record of missteps sends a powerful message: failure is not something to be hidden but an essential part of learning. It creates psychological safety, encouraging employees to treat every action as an experiment rather than a pass-or-fail test. By embracing failure with enthusiasm, NerdWallet builds the authenticity and resilience needed to innovate and earn stakeholder trust.

Narrator: To improve a plan, leaders must "make new friends" by tapping into diverse perspectives. Frei and Morriss argue that inclusion is not a social nicety but a profound competitive advantage. Diverse teams, when managed inclusively, consistently outperform homogenous ones. The book cites compelling data: gender-diverse teams make better business decisions than individuals 75% of the time. When you add geographic diversity and a significant age gap, that number jumps to 87%.

The story of Microsoft's turnaround under CEO Satya Nadella serves as a powerful case study. When Nadella took over, he and Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan made inclusion a core strategic priority. They embedded it into performance evaluations, measuring not just an employee's individual contribution but also their impact on others. This focus on "how" work got done, not just "what" got done, was instrumental in shifting the company's culture from one of internal competition to one of collaboration. The result was a historic spike in performance, demonstrating a clear link between a culture of inclusion and bottom-line results.

Narrator: Facts and data are not enough to drive change; leaders must tell a good story. A compelling narrative unleashes an organization's energy by honoring the past, providing a clear mandate for change, and painting an optimistic picture of the future. One of the most powerful examples of this is the "Pizza Turnaround" by Domino's.

In the late 2000s, Domino's was in trouble. Its pizza was widely mocked, with customer feedback comparing it to "cardboard." Instead of hiding from this painful truth, the leadership team, led by CEO Patrick Doyle, decided to shine a spotlight on it. They launched a national advertising campaign that featured real, scathing customer comments. They publicly admitted their pizza was bad and committed to making it better. This act of radical transparency honored the past—even the ugly parts—and created an undeniable mandate for change. As the CMO at the time said, "By saying what we said about the pizza, we blew up the bridge. There was no going back." This bold, honest story mobilized the entire company and won back consumer trust, leading to a spectacular and sustained turnaround.

Narrator: The final step is to execute with urgency. The authors argue that the fastest way to speed up an organization is to empower more people to make more decisions. Speed doesn't come from top-down commands; it comes from getting out of the way. The gold standard for this principle is the Ritz-Carlton's legendary empowerment policy.

Founder Horst Shulze gave every single employee—from housekeeping to the front desk—the authority to spend up to $2,000 per incident to resolve a guest's problem, without needing a manager's approval. When he introduced it, franchise owners threatened to sue, fearing financial ruin. But Shulze understood the long-term value of trust and empowerment. This policy enabled employees to solve problems instantly, creating incredible stories of customer service, like the employee who bought a new Thomas the Tank Engine toy for a distraught child and created a photo album of the toy's "adventures" around the hotel. This level of empowerment not only creates speed and stellar service but also builds a culture where employees are trusted to act like owners.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Move Fast & Fix Things is that leadership is fundamentally an act of empowerment. The goal is not to be the smartest person in the room or the one with all the answers. Instead, it is to create the conditions—trust, inclusion, and a compelling shared purpose—that allow everyone else to be great. Frei and Morriss redefine the leader's job as an architect of an environment where imperfect people can come together to solve hard problems with both speed and care.

The book's most challenging idea is also its most liberating: to truly accelerate, leaders must learn to let go. They must have the courage to empower their teams, to trust them with real decisions, and to get out of their way. This leaves us with a critical question for any leader: What are you willing to stop doing, or even be "bad" at, in order to free up your team to move fast and fix the things that truly matter?