Pace of Progress

The idea for this article comes from a presentation by Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy, who used a simple instrument, the car speedometer, to make a fantastic point about how perspective shapes behaviour. And I think this is also useful to consider for education.

Most people know what a speedometer shows. Ten miles an hour, twenty, thirty, the familiar scale we see in every car.

But what was new to me were the smaller markings printed inside the dial, the paceometer. It shows how long it would take to travel ten miles at each speed. The information is identical, but the perspective is different.

And that difference changes things.

At 20 mph, ten miles takes thirty minutes. At 30 mph, twenty minutes. You save ten minutes by speeding up. But once you’re already travelling fast, the gains collapse. Jumping from 70 to 90 mph barely saves two minutes, while risk, stress, and fuel consumption soar.

The paceometer shows that beyond a certain point, going faster doesn’t help you arrive meaningfully sooner. It just increases danger, noise, and tension.

Leadership can be full of the same illusion as we often equate pace with progress. We push harder, move quicker, and measure success by the speed of delivery. It's just about getting the job done as quickly as possible. But the gains from acceleration are not evenly distributed. Whilst the jump from slow to steady is transformative, the jump from fast to frantic can be destructive for everyone.

There’s a point where the extra effort stops bringing meaningful returns. The tricky part is to know when speed really adds value, and when it begins to cost more than it creates.

Because the way progress is presented shapes how people behave. If all we ever look at is the speedometer; the deadlines, targets, outputs, we’ll drive ourselves to exhaustion for marginal gains. But when we learn to read the paceometer, we realise that small shifts in tempo can make big differences in safety, sustainability, and sense. It becomes just not worth it.

So my thinking is that schools that frantically sprint to 'impress inspectors' or secure quick data spikes often end up back at square one when their best staff resign or the initiatives themselves collapse. Whilst the school moving at a sustainable pace builds deep, lasting habits that ultimately achieve superior, long-term progress.