Use this set to probe for bias for action, time-to-decision, and the ability to move fast without leaving a mess. Each section includes prompts and cues for what strong answers demonstrate.

Operating Rhythm & Prioritization

• How do you decide what gets done today vs. tomorrow?
  Good answers: Clear priority framework (impact × urgency), ruthless scoping, and explicit trade-offs documented.
• Walk me through your first hour on a high-stakes day.
  Good answers: Quick plan, triage, calendar reblocks, comms to stakeholders, and visible board of top 3 outcomes.
• Tell me about a time you cut scope to ship faster.
  Good answers: MVP definition, risk assessment, guardrails, and retrospective with learning captured.
• What signals tell you a task is stuck?
  Good answers: Aging WIP, silent threads, repeated blockers; proposes escalation or path unblocking within a set SLA.
• How do you prevent urgent work from eroding important work?
  Good answers: Capacity buffers, timeboxing, weekly big-rocks review, and protected focus blocks.

Decision Velocity & Ownership

• Describe a decision you made with incomplete data.
  Good answers: Defines reversible vs. irreversible, sets a decision deadline, commits with a check-back plan.
• When do you escalate vs. decide?
  Good answers: Thresholds by risk/impact, named owner, and “disagree-and-commit” posture after a call is made.
• How do you keep momentum when dependencies lag?
  Good answers: Parallelization, mocks, stubs, alternative paths, and clear “need-by” pings.
• Tell me about a time you unblocked a team in under 24 hours.
  Good answers: Direct outreach, decision memo, temporary workaround, and follow-up to harden fix.
• What’s your policy on meetings vs. async for urgent topics?
  Good answers: Short decision memos, async first, 15-min huddles for crisp calls, no-meeting waits for urgent items.

Execution Under Pressure

• Share a story where a deadline moved up suddenly.
  Good answers: Re-plan fast, renegotiate non-critical scope, clear owner map, daily standups, delivered on time.
• How do you maintain quality at speed?
  Good answers: Preflight checklists, templates, pair checks, sampling audits, and rollback plans.
• What’s your approach to weekend/after-hours work?
  Good answers: Clear criteria, rotation fairness, recovery time, and proactive load smoothing to avoid heroics.
• Describe the fastest project you shipped that stuck.
  Good answers: Outcomes persisted, low bug tail, customers delighted, and institutionalized learnings.
• What do you do in the last hour before a deadline?
  Good answers: Final sanity checks, go/no-go gate, comms to stakeholders, and aligned post-launch monitoring.

Proactive Risk Management

• How do you detect issues early enough to act quickly?
  Good answers: Leading indicators, health dashboards, alert thresholds, and handoff criteria.
• Tell me about a time you prevented a fire drill.
  Good answers: Early signal, pre-emptive fix, stakeholder heads-up, and quantifiable avoided cost.
• What’s your escalation ladder for urgent risks?
  Good answers: Time-bound steps, defined channels, named decision maker, and documentation.
• How do you balance speed with compliance/security?
  Good answers: Pre-approved patterns, guardrails, checklists, and rapid approvals with audit trail.
• Example of a fast rollback you executed.
  Good answers: Clear trigger, step-by-step plan, quick comms, and root-cause follow-up.

Cross-Functional Acceleration

• How do you get quick answers from busy partners?
  Good answers: Terse prompts, options A/B, deadline, and preferred channel; offers draft for easy yes/no.
• What artifacts speed up alignment?
  Good answers: One-pagers, RACI, decision logs, status dashboards, and visual timelines.
• Describe a time you cut approvals time in half.
  Good answers: Removed steps, batched requests, standard forms, and defined SLAs.
• How do you avoid context ping-pong?
  Good answers: Bundled questions, pre-reads, and single-threaded owners.
• What’s your approach to stakeholder updates during a sprint?
  Good answers: Daily or twice-weekly brief updates with risks, asks, and next steps—no long decks.

Customer Responsiveness

• Tell me about turning around a critical customer request quickly.
  Good answers: Clarified success criteria, rapid timeline, interim relief, and follow-through to full fix.
• What response-time standards do you hold?
  Good answers: SLAs by channel/severity, routing rules, and on-call rotation.
• How do you prioritize loud vs. right customers?
  Good answers: Impact on revenue/brand, fairness, and transparent criteria shared upfront.
• Describe a time you said “not now” to a customer but kept trust.
  Good answers: Honest constraints, alternative path, date for revisit, and updates.
• How do you shorten feedback loops post-launch?
  Good answers: Fast surveys, telemetry, shadowing calls, and rapid patch releases.

Metrics & Cadence

• What are your leading indicators for urgency?
  Good answers: Cycle time, queue age, SLA adherence, unblock time, and % tasks with owner and due date.
• How do you review these metrics weekly?
  Good answers: WBR with dashboards, exception review, and actions with owners.
• What’s your definition of “fast” in your last role?
  Good answers: Concrete numbers (e.g., PR to deploy < 24h, customer P1 response < 30m) and variance bands.
• How do you set personal response SLAs?
  Good answers: Inbox triage, snooze/flags, and response windows by channel.
• What mechanisms reduce waiting in your team?
  Good answers: Pairing, parallel work, small batch sizes, and automated checks.

Leadership Signals

• How do you model urgency without burnout?
  Good answers: Clear goals, sustainable pace, recovery, and celebrating “done done,” not heroics.
• A time you defended speed against bureaucracy.
  Good answers: Challenged process, got exceptions, and codified new standard.
• How do you coach someone who is slow but careful?
  Good answers: Set timeboxes, practice decisions, define reversible calls, and build confidence.
• How do you treat misses on SLAs?
  Good answers: Root cause, countermeasures, and public learning without blame.
• What behavior do you reward to reinforce urgency?
  Good answers: Ownership, proactive updates, unblocking others, and delivering outcomes.

Anti‑Patterns & Ethics

• What’s the difference between urgency and chaos?
  Good answers: Plans, owners, SLAs, and documentation vs. panic and ad hoc thrash.
• Tell me about a time speed created risk.
  Good answers: Acknowledges harm, rollback, postmortem, and policy change.
• How do you avoid cutting corners on compliance or inclusion?
  Good answers: Pre-baked checklists, approvals-in-advance, and early stakeholder involvement.
• What do you stop doing to go faster?
  Good answers: Kill low-value rituals, async updates replace long meetings, and consolidate tools.
• When is waiting the urgent thing to do?
  Good answers: Option value, info arrival, reversibility, and risk of premature lock-in.

Case Study Exercises

• P1 incident: Draft a 60-minute stabilization plan, comms, and roles.
• Launch crunch: Scope an MVP to hit a fixed date; list what you cut and why.
• Customer escalation: Write the first reply and a 48-hour recovery plan.
• Approval maze: Redesign a 6-step approval to 3 without losing control.
• Throughput: Propose 3 mechanisms to reduce average cycle time by 30%.

Tip: Look for concrete SLAs, explicit trade-offs, rapid feedback loops, and calm, structured execution. Urgency is measured in outcomes, not volume of activity.