Sunday Musings Brakes Win Races What

Happy Sunday Monday Friends!

Hello Friends! Here is 1 quote I’m musing on this week, 2 ideas, 3 of my favorite things from the week, and 1 question.

If you find this useful, forward it to a friend or your team—and start a dialogue. I’d love to hear what it sparks.

One Quote I’m Musing

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

| Buckminster Fuller

🚥 The Metaphor That Shifted My Thinking

I’ve been obsessed with Formula 1 for years. It’s more than just a sport—it’s a moving laboratory where engineering, strategy, data, and human performance collide at 200 mph.

Here’s why I love it (and you’re reading this, so you probably will too): it’s not just about how fast the cars go. It’s how precisely they stop. How naturally they manage risk. How the best teams win not because they push their speed—but because they know exactly when to brake.

The brake is just as important as the engine. Without it, the car doesn’t finish the race—it doesn’t survive the corner one.

I think it’s the perfect metaphor for today’s innovation landscape.
Innovation is the engine. Security is the brake system.
And just like in F1, they must work in harmony if we’re going to finish strong.

🧱 Why Security Feels Like the Enemy of Progress

In high-velocity environments—startups, cloud-native platforms, or global transformation projects—security often gets cast as the thing slowing everything down.

It’s the team that says:

“We can’t ship that yet.”

Feels like needless friction.

But that’s only true if you’re thinking about speed in isolation.

Security isn’t a constraint. It’s what lets you push the limit while remaining agile.

Think of it like traction control. It doesn’t slow you down—it helps you apply power without ending up in the gravel, or the wall.

Take Equifax.

They had a known vulnerability. They chose not to patch it. Speed and convenience won.

The result?

147 million people affected.

A $700M fine, and a permanent loss of trust.

The lesson? Prevention isn’t the enemy of progress—it’s the precondition for it.
And teams that get it pull ahead.

🛠️ Security as a Force Multiplier

The best F1 teams don’t just design for speed—they design for reliability. Red Bull wasn’t just fast—they were consistent. Maclaren doesn’t just dominate straights—they master tire degradation and telemetry like a science.

The same applies to high-performing companies. Innovation without security is like putting a prototype on the grid at Monaco—beautiful, thrilling, and begging to meet the wall at Fairmont.

When security is integrated from day one, it becomes a force multiplier. It:

• Enables trust: Users don’t want to be “disrupted”—they want to be safe.

• Unlocks scale: You can’t scale what you can’t defend.

• Protects differentiation: Innovation only matters if you can keep it from being stolen or sabotaged.

Trust isn’t a “nice to have.”

It’s traction.

Without traction, you don’t move—no matter how big your engine is, no matter how attractive your livery.

⚙️ Designing the Right Balance: Lessons from Pit Wall

1. Build the Car Around the Track
F1 teams design around the calendar—the corners, the weather, the data. Your security model should reflect your business model. Don’t retrofit it post-launch. Design for the race you’re entering.

2. Think in Laps, Not Just Sectors
A fast sector doesn’t matter if the lap is a mess. MVPs that ignore security build tech debt. Design for repeatable, scalable, resilient performance.

3. Red Team Like You Simulate Race Strategy
Top teams simulate every possible failure before race day. You should too. Red team your products, systems, and assumptions before they need inters in Monaco.

4. Make the Repair Crew Part of the Build
Security shouldn’t be the emergency pit stop—it should be in the garage from day one. Cross-functional teams win races and ship resilient systems.

🏆 The Winning Teams Get It

• Tesla delivers over-the-air updates with the speed of a tech startup—but invites hackers to try and break their systems.

• Apple embeds security into hardware and markets privacy as a core feature—turning trust into competitive advantage.

• Estonia, after being hit with a cyberattack, rebuilt its entire government on secure-by-design principles—becoming a global model for digital infrastructure.

These teams don’t sacrifice speed for control—they optimize for both.

Because that’s what creates P1 teams.

Two Ideas From Me

1. Security and innovation don’t have to be a trade-off.
   Your ability to innovate at speed depends on how much control you’ve engineered into the system. It’s not a binary—it’s a balance.

2. The future belongs to teams who don’t just accelerate—but can pivot, adapt, and endure.
   Winning a race is nice. Winning consistently? That’s a legacy.

Three Favorite Things This Week

1. F1 Tech Deep Dive: How Brake-by-Wire Changed Racing
   A look at how digital braking systems revolutionized control—making cars faster by making them smarter. | Read the Article | Watch a Video

2. Tool of the Week: Prowler for AWS Security
   Like real-time telemetry for your cloud environment. Fast, detailed, and helps spot vulnerabilities before they spin out of control. | Explore Prowler

3. Book Reread: “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz
   A gut-punch on decision-making under pressure. Reminds me that in tech—as in racing—it’s how you handle the corners that defines the lap.

A Question for the Week Ahead

Where in your organization—or life—are you pushing harder on the throttle than your brakes can handle?

And what would it look like to upgrade your control systems before the next corner?

If this hit home, forward it to someone who’s building fast—and ask them what their braking system looks like.

Have a wonderful week,

I’ll see you Sunday.
​-e