Authors of Move Fast and Fix Things tell judiciary leaders to speed reforms without sacrificing deliberation

Frances Frei, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Anne Morris, founder and executive director of the Leadership Consortium, told Judge Kathy Surratt-States on the Federal Judicial Center's In Session: Leading the Judiciary podcast that courts can increase the pace of organizational change without abandoning their deliberative norms. The authors, discussing their book Move Fast and Fix Things, urged leaders to begin by identifying the problems that cause the most pain to people the institution serves and to solve those first.

Why start with the most painful problems? Frei and Morris said it focuses limited authority and attention where change will be felt most. "Whoever is in most amount of pain, that's where we want to start," the hosts opened; the guests argued that solving those problems builds momentum and optimism across the organization.

The guests laid out a five-step framework: diagnose the real problem (not just symptoms), "solve for trust" by identifying which of three trust pillarsauthenticity, logic and empathyis "wobbling," broaden participation to include people who think differently, craft a three-part leadership story that honors the past, gives a clear present-tense mandate and describes a rigorous, optimistic path forward, and only then use speed accelerants. They cautioned that using accelerants before doing this work risks "moving fast and breaking things."

On trust, Frei and Morris said leaders often respond to requests for clarity with empathy (for example, extra perks) when stakeholders are asking for concrete timelines or logic. "We want to match the response to the wobble," they said, recommending leaders diagnose which trust pillar is failing and pilot targeted fixes. They gave workplace examples: younger employees asking for clearer promotion timing are making a logic request; addressing that with only empathy can deepen mistrust.

The authors also described low-cost operational "indignities" that signal broader system problems, such as repeatedly broken equipment that tells staff their time is not valued. Finding and fixing those small but recurring barriers, they argued, can change perceptions of leadership commitment and create a positive feedback loop.

Practical meeting reforms were a recurring theme: use agendas to "declare victory" and end early, limit who needs to attend live, provide curated edited content for others and ask a meeting prompt such as "Can someone articulate a different point of view?" to reduce redundancy and surface constructive dissent. They urged including team members who prefer faster-format content when designing meetings.

For pace, the guests recommended widening bottlenecks by empowering more people to decide, which allows distributed execution and higher overall speed. They also stressed recovery: leaders and teams must build structured rest into schedules to sustain performance.

Judge Kathy Surratt-States said she found several usable tactics for court leadership from the conversation. The episode closes with directions to the FJC podcast feed and credits noting the program was produced with U.S. taxpayer support.

The podcast episode is available through the Federal Judicial Center and major platforms; for more resources the guests referenced their Fixable podcast and a website listed during the episode.