The Trade-Off Menu: Turn a Velocity Demand Into Leverage
When leadership wants everything faster, hand them a menu of what you'll do and what you won't—and make them choose.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 88%
Leaders who demand more velocity often also demand every product and segment at once, assuming more goals means faster execution. Charles's counter: present an explicit menu of trade-offs—here's what we're doing, here's what we're now not doing and why—and force a choice. Focusing on four things instead of eight actually makes you faster. Communicating those trade-offs isn't pushing back; it is increasing velocity, and it's the PM's job.
Origin
Geoff Charles at Ramp, advising PMs facing pressure from leaders who saw Ramp's velocity and demanded their own teams replicate it.
Core principles
- 01More goals do not mean faster execution—they mean slower execution across too many fronts
- 02You can't ask for velocity without also granting empowerment, trust, less process, and more focus
- 03Presenting trade-offs is not pushing back—it's increasing velocity, and it's the PM's core job
- 04Status meetings and process added in the name of accountability are among the biggest ways to demotivate people and destroy velocity
How to run it
- 1
Reframe the velocity demand as leverage
When a leader demands more speed, use the ask to renegotiate how things operate—more empowerment, more trust, less process, more focus.
Watch out Leaders from traditional industries are often uncomfortable with the trade-offs velocity actually requires; name that discomfort explicitly.
- 2
Kill status meetings and process
Move status to async, real-time, in the systems where work happens. Reserve meetings for collaboration, ideation, and decisions. Audit your calendar and kill as much as possible.
Pro tip Charles never scheduled a single status meeting—statuses are done async in the systems teams already operate in.
Watch out Adding status meetings and documents to 'hold teams accountable' is a huge way to demotivate people and slow them down.
- 3
Build the menu
List explicitly what you're doing and what you're now not doing, with the reasoning. Frame it as a menu of items for leadership to pick from.
- 4
Make leadership choose
Present the trade-offs and have executives pick. Focusing on four things rather than eight lets the team execute much faster.
Pro tip Do this out loud even when you fear looking like you're pushing back—surfacing trade-offs executives usually don't hear is precisely how you raise velocity.
In the wild
When Charles asked the CEO whether to add more products to one segment or expand to another (SME vs mid-market vs enterprise), the CEO's instinct was 'all of it,' believing more goals meant faster execution.
→ Charles's answer was to present the trade-offs back and force a choice, enabling faster execution on fewer things.
Common mistakes
Saying yes to 'all of it'
Accepting eight goals because leadership wants everything spreads the team thin and slows every front; the fix is to make the trade-offs explicit and force prioritization down to four.
Staying silent out of fear of pushing back
PMs often withhold trade-offs to avoid looking obstructive, but that silence is what kills velocity—surfacing the choice is the job, and it's the opposite of pushing back.
Is it for you?
Best for
PMs and product leaders under pressure from executives to move faster and do more simultaneously.
Not ideal for
Situations where leadership has already made a deliberate, well-reasoned bet on breadth and simply needs execution.
From the transcript
“give them a menu of items and you'll see that you're able to execute much much faster on on four things rather than eight at…”
“you're actually not pushing back you're increasing velocity”
“you can't ask for velocity and not have empowerment and not trust and not eliminate process and not increase the focus”
“I've never had a status meeting I've never scheduled a status meeting statuses are done async”
From the episode
Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup of all time
Geoff Charles (VP of Product)