Rule #10: If Everything Is Under Control, You’re Not Going Fast Enough

September has always been my favorite time of year. The heavy heat of summer finally lifts, but the evenings stay warm enough for dinners outdoors, a glass of wine, and long conversations under open skies. For me, recently September started carrying another association - Formula 1. race. Around this time, my hometown gears up for one of the most spectacular sports events in the world: an F1 race, right in the city center.

And while my brain was thinking about the race, the drivers, the anticipation of actions, a quote from racing legend Mario Andretti suddenly came back to me:

“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.”

Speed vs. Control

We’ve talked about speed before—the importance of moving forward, of momentum, of refusing to get stuck in the mud of over-analysis. But today’s lesson is less about speed itself and more about the balance between speed and control.

In racing, absolute control is an illusion. At 300 kilometers per hour, you’re always on the edge. Tires grip, but only just. Brakes respond, but only just. The smallest error can send you spinning. And yet, if you’re completely comfortable, if everything feels stable - you’re probably not pushing hard enough to win.

Business isn’t so different. Leaders who cling to the idea of perfect control - over projects, over people, over outcomes - end up slowing everything down. They create layers of approvals, rigid processes, endless checklists. Things feel safe, but progress crawls.

Worse, teams suffocate. People stop taking risks. Innovation stalls. And instead of real progress, you get a very controlled version of mediocrity.

What the Books Say

We’ve all heard the startup mantras. Mark Zuckerberg’s old one - “Move fast and break things.” It meant pushing products to market quickly, even if something broke. It meant sacrificing perfection for momentum. At Facebook, the motto was a license to ship first, fix later.

Uber took the same philosophy to the extreme. In Super Pumped, Mike Isaac tells stories of engineers bypassing rules and processes, because waiting for approvals would kill velocity. “If he had played by the rules … he’d still be waiting for approval.” The culture wasn’t about perfect control-it was about speed, learning, and then fixing mistakes after.

And that’s the point. Companies that scale too slowly lose ground. LeadDev notes that many organizations, as they grow, become so scared of mistakes that they slow down more than necessary. They think control equals safety. In reality, it just means missed opportunities.

The lesson from startups is clear: progress lives at the edge of control. Too much comfort, and you’re not moving fast enough.

My Career Without Full Control

If I’m honest, I’ve never felt in full control of my career. Not once in the last 15 years. Not with my teams. Not with my targets. Not with the projects I’ve led.

There’s always been a degree of uncertainty, of chaos, of pressure that no plan could fully eliminate. Early on, I thought this was a weakness—that if I just worked harder, if I just planned better, I could somehow “master” control.

But I’ve learned that lack of control isn’t a flaw. It’s the cost of moving fast, of aiming high, of doing work that matters. The moments where I’ve tried to cling to full control-by micromanaging, over-planning, or trying to predict every possible risk-have been the moments where progress stalled.

The most meaningful wins in my career have always come when I allowed myself, and my team, to operate on that edge. Not recklessly, but fast enough that it didn’t always feel safe.

The Manager’s Lesson

Mario Andretti’s line is more than a racing quote—it’s a leadership truth.

You will never have full control over every aspect of your work. And that’s exactly how it should be. Because full control means you’re moving too slowly, stuck in safety, clinging to comfort.

Take something as simple as a quarterly sales target. If every number is predictable, every deal already locked in, every variable neatly accounted for-you’re not growing. You’re maintaining. True growth happens when you set a target that stretches your team, when some deals feel risky, when some projects feel uncomfortably ambitious. That’s when speed increases, creativity kicks in, and breakthroughs appear.

The job of a manager isn’t to eliminate risk. It’s to manage risk while keeping momentum alive. It’s to balance control with speed—and to know that the real progress, the real breakthroughs, only happen when you’re operating at the edge.

Because if everything is under control, you’re not going fast enough.