Pace of Progress
- Michael Everett
- Jul 25, 2025
- 2 min read
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 profound point about how perspective shapes behaviour.
Most people know what a speedometer shows.
Ten miles an hour, twenty, thirty, the familiar rhythm of movement.
But fewer have noticed the smaller markings sometimes 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 everything.
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 teaches a quiet truth: beyond a certain point, going faster doesn’t help you arrive meaningfully sooner. It just increases danger, noise, and tension.
Leadership is full of the same illusion. We equate pace with progress. We push harder, move quicker, and measure success by the speed of delivery. But the gains from acceleration are not evenly distributed. The jump from slow to steady is transformative. The jump from fast to frantic is destructive.
There’s a point where the extra effort stops bringing meaningful returns, where what looks like urgency is actually erosion.
Great leaders understand the curve. They know when momentum adds value, and when it begins to cost more than it creates. They use pace not as a reflex, but as a strategy, speeding up to seize opportunity, slowing down to preserve clarity, rest, and judgement.
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 see the journey differently. We realise that small shifts in tempo can make big differences in safety, sustainability, and sense.
Leadership isn’t about going faster. It’s about going wisely. Knowing when the real gains lie in acceleration and when they lie in restraint.
The best leaders don’t just watch the speed. They read the pace.
