You don’t have the time to “not have time”

I don’t know if it’s an excuse or a misperception, but lately I’ve been hearing that people don’t have time to follow sound business practices. There is no time to plan, to get people’s buy-in to change, or to think critically about the business. Execution is the name of the game. Most people agree that those other principles make sense theoretically. Yet, they argue that in a fast-paced environment such principles are luxuries or not as relevant.

I’m not so sure. Those principles are even more important in a fast-paced environment. Think about a car. At 20 MPH you might not even notice that one wheel is out of alignment. Accelerate to 100 MPH and suddenly the car shakes furiously. Speed magnifies alignment problems. This is true in business as well. To respond quickly to competitive or economic threats, you need an aligned workforce. You can’t afford to have people who are still holding out for the old way. Each decision they make will move you toward or away from your goals. Speed also amplifies mistakes. If your environment is moving so fast, you have less time to recover. Each mistake provides the opportunity for your competition to move in. You’d better have a workforce that is thinking because you might only have one shot at getting things right.

Despite the belief that there is no time for the right things, there always seems to be time and money to clean up or redo the wrong things. In reality, the only people who do not need to be thinking, planning, and gaining buy-in for change are the ones with all the time in the world to get things done.