"Move Fast & Fix Things": Practical Ways Tech Leaders Can Build Ethical Teams Without Slowing Down

Look, I’ve seen too many tech leaders get trapped in this false choice: move fast and break people, or slow down to be “ethical.” That’s garbage thinking. Frances Frei nailed it with her “Move Fast & Fix Things” approach, speed and ethics aren’t enemies. In fact, when you do ethics right, it actually makes you faster.

I’ve been working with startups and scale-ups for years, and the teams that get this balance right? They’re the ones that survive and thrive. The ones that don’t… well, let’s just say I’ve helped clean up more ethical disasters than I’d like to count.

The Trust-Speed Connection Everyone Misses

Here’s what most leaders don’t get: trust is your secret weapon for speed, not your speed bump. When your team trusts you and each other, decisions happen faster, communication is clearer, and people actually tell you when something’s broken before it becomes a crisis.

I worked with one startup where the CTO thought being “ethical” meant holding hour-long meetings about every decision. Wrong approach. We flipped it: instead of more process, we built more trust. Suddenly, developers were comfortable pushing back on unrealistic deadlines, product managers weren’t hiding technical debt, and the whole team started moving faster because they weren’t second-guessing each other.

The real insight? When people trust that you’ll have their back, they take smart risks instead of covering their asses. That’s how you get speed.

Lead by Example (But Make It Practical)

I see a lot of leaders talk about “modeling ethical behavior” like it’s some abstract concept. Let me make this concrete: it means showing your work. When I make a decision that affects the team, I explain my reasoning. When I screw up: and trust me, I do: I own it publicly and explain what I’m changing.

Here’s a real example: I once pushed a client team to hit an impossible deadline because I was worried about losing the contract. The team delivered, but two developers burned out and quit within a month. At our next all-hands, I walked through exactly what happened, why I made that call, and the new framework I was implementing to prevent it.

Did that take 15 minutes out of our meeting? Sure. Did it save us months of people not trusting my judgment? Absolutely.

Practical transparency looks like:

Sharing the reasoning behind tough decisions
Admitting when you’re wrong (quickly and specifically)
Explaining trade-offs instead of just announcing conclusions
Making your decision-making process visible to the team

Build “High Tolerance, Low Ego” Communication

This is one of my favorite concepts from the research. Your team needs to be able to challenge ideas, push back on decisions, and occasionally irritate each other: all in service of better outcomes. But most leaders create environments where people are too polite to be honest.

I tell every team I work with: “I’d rather you piss me off with the truth than make me happy with bullshit.” And I mean it. When someone on the team says, “Shawn, this plan is going to fail for these three reasons,” my first response isn’t defensiveness: it’s gratitude.

Here’s how I set up these systems in practice:

Create friction-free feedback channels: We use a simple Slack channel called #real-talk where anyone can challenge any decision. No retaliation, no hurt feelings, just honest discussion.

Reward the messengers: When someone brings bad news early, I celebrate it publicly. “Thanks to Sarah for catching this architecture problem before we shipped it to production.” People learn that honesty gets rewarded, not punished.

Make challenge the default: In team meetings, I always ask, “What am I missing?” and wait for actual answers. If no one pushes back, I assume I didn’t explain things well enough.

Ethics Training That Actually Works

Most ethics training is terrible. It’s abstract, boring, and completely disconnected from the daily decisions developers and product managers actually make. I’ve seen companies spend thousands on ethics consultants while their teams still have no idea how to handle real ethical dilemmas.

Here’s what works: Make it specific to your actual work. Instead of generic “don’t discriminate” modules, we run scenarios based on real situations the team might face.

Example scenario: “You’re behind on a sprint, and you notice the algorithm is showing biased results against certain user groups. Marketing is pushing for launch. What do you do?”

Then we walk through the decision framework:

What are the immediate risks?
What are the long-term consequences?
Who gets hurt if we ship this?
What would we want someone to do if we were the affected users?

The key is making it feel like problem-solving, not compliance theater. We spend 30 minutes every month on these scenarios, and it’s some of the most valuable team time we have.

Dynamic Codes of Conduct

I hate static policy documents. They’re written once, forgotten immediately, and become irrelevant as the company grows. Instead, we treat our code of conduct like living software: it gets updated, versioned, and improved based on real feedback.

Our approach:

Quarterly reviews: We look at what ethical dilemmas actually came up and update the guidelines accordingly
Team input: Everyone contributes examples and edge cases from their work
Plain language: No legal jargon. If a junior developer can’t understand it, we rewrite it

The document isn’t there to cover the company’s legal ass: it’s there to help people make good decisions quickly.

Speed Through Empathy (Not Despite It)

This might sound touchy-feely, but hear me out: empathy is a productivity tool. When you understand what your team is actually dealing with: the technical challenges, the personal stress, the career concerns: you make better decisions faster.

I do regular one-on-ones, but not the usual “how’s work going?” conversations. I ask specific questions:

What’s the most frustrating part of your current project?
What would make you 20% more effective?
What decision am I making that doesn’t make sense from your perspective?

These conversations save me from making decisions based on incomplete information. Instead of guessing what the team needs, I actually know. That means fewer course corrections, less wasted effort, and faster progress toward real goals.

The Trust-Building Feedback Loop

Here’s the thing about building ethical teams at speed: it’s a compounding effect. Every ethical decision builds trust, which enables faster decisions, which creates more opportunities for ethical choices. It’s a positive feedback loop.

But you have to be intentional about starting that loop. It begins with small, visible actions:

Following through on commitments (even small ones)
Admitting mistakes before they become obvious
Giving credit where it’s due (especially to junior team members)
Making decisions that prioritize long-term team health over short-term gains

I track this stuff. Not in some formal system, but I pay attention to how long it takes to make decisions, how often people push back on ideas, and whether team members are bringing problems to me early or trying to solve everything themselves.

When these metrics improve, I know the trust-building is working.

Making It Stick

The biggest challenge isn’t implementing these practices: it’s maintaining them when you’re under pressure. When deadlines loom and stakeholders are breathing down your neck, it’s tempting to cut corners on the “soft stuff.”

That’s exactly when you can’t afford to cut corners. Pressure situations are where ethical frameworks prove their value. They help you make good decisions quickly instead of panicking or reverting to harmful patterns.

I keep a simple checklist for high-pressure decisions:

Who benefits from this choice?
Who bears the cost?
What would I want someone else to do in my position?
Can I explain this decision to the team without embarrassment?

If I can’t answer those questions cleanly, I slow down and find a better option. Nine times out of ten, there’s a path that serves both speed and ethics: you just have to be disciplined enough to find it.

The payoff is worth it. Teams that operate this way don’t just move fast: they move fast in the right direction, with everyone pulling together instead of covering their backs. That’s not just better ethics; it’s better business.