If there is one defining factor of how the world works today versus any other time in history it is speed.
Today, everything happens faster. Not just Jimmy John’s. And Tinactin.
Communication technology has advanced from mail, to email to Slack and texting. Information arrives instantly.
News can be reported with a tweet, just seconds after it occurs.
You can stream practically anything you want to watch on demand, anytime.
AI has squeezed the gestational period of our research, discovery, query and analysis down to a mere burp.
So Why All The Slow Motion?
Yet, with all of the technology enabling us to move at Lightning McQueen-speed, I am constantly surprised by how slow many organizations move.
Nearly all technological friction has been taken out of our systems, yet human friction is still ubiquitous. K, why is that?
Human decision making, prioritization and hesitation still kill momentum, push deadlines and slow progress to a snail-mail’s pace.
The Weaponry, the advertising and ideas agency I lead, was launched 9 years ago, and the urgency of the social era was baked into our DNA. Because in the social era, opportunities come and go in a flash. In the social era, you must harvest social opportunities during the very short season when the opportunities are ripe. This can be as short as a few seconds, but never longer than a couple of days.
One of the mandates for our organization is to operate with the urgency of social media. Move quickly. Jump on opportunities. Thwart threats quickly. Move faster than other organizations. It was programmed into our genomic code from the start.
When we present timelines in our proposals, we share aggressive timelines, and note that this timeline only works if the client can keep up, and turn approvals around within our reasonable, but not generous, turnaround periods.
Yet as much as we hear about how important the work we do is to our clients’ success and how they want to get it done quickly, organizations can rarely keep up with their own ambitions. They are simply not built for speed and urgency.
While not all windows of opportunity close as quickly as social media does, all opportunities are finite.
When you fail to get your advertising in market in time, you also fail to drive sales during that time. For seasonal businesses, that is revenue lost forever. For non-seasonal businesses, it means your sales slide later in the year or into the next year. When you delay decisions, your overall revenue numbers for the current month, quarter or year are lower than they should be. That’s a loss. And an avoidable one.
My friend and client Bob Monnat, Senior Partner at Mandel Group Inc, shared some insights with me about one of his organization’s best partners. He revealed that they are great partners because they are always pushing them to move faster, to decide quicker, to get the work done so that they can ultimately turn their projects into cash-flowing assets.
Never lose sight of the reason businesses exist. They are created to make money. And time is money. The quicker you move, the more money you are likely to make.
Key Takeaway
Move faster. Today, advanced technology means that the slowest part of the process is the humans who have the most to gain. Slow actions and slow decisions cause wasteful delays. Identify the bottlenecks and pinch points in your process. Then attack them. Address your delays to help move your organization faster so that everyone can enjoy the success of speed. It is today’s competitive advantage.
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+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media. And consider subscribing to Adam’s Good Newsletter.
Adam Albrecht Blog 