Balancing Urgency with Diligence in Leadership
When deadlines are rapidly approaching and pressure intensifies, the temptation to rush can feel overwhelming. Yet, in the haste to deliver quick results, crucial steps are often bypassed—ironically leading to outcomes that are the opposite of true efficiency. Efficiency is much more than being fast; it requires planning and a thoughtful approach.
Learning from Past Mistakes
I learned this lesson the hard way early in my career while leading the launch of new client ordering software. Under immense pressure to impress stakeholders at an upcoming board meeting, we raced to get the software into production without conducting essential user testing. The result was a software malfunction that infuriated customers and turned what should have been a celebratory board meeting into an emergency damage control session. As the client service leader fielding those angry calls, it was a grueling and very personal experience that I never wanted to repeat.
The Importance of Empathy and Planning
In hindsight, if I had taken the time to understand the pressures facing leadership rather than reacting hastily, I could have been more empathetic to both leaders and my project team. I could have proposed a solution that balanced the urgency with sufficient diligence. Instead of immediately green-lighting a rushed, flawed launch, a safer path could have been deployed to a subset of key clients first in a controlled pilot to gather feedback before scaling broader.
Precision and Protocols in High-Stakes Fields
This experience reinforced a vital truth: forging ahead under pressure without understanding the impact is a fool's errand—especially in highly regulated fields like life sciences where precision and adherence to protocols are required. We must understand the pressures that can tempt organizations into making premature, short-sighted decisions that inevitably undermine efficiency further down the line.
Balancing Urgency and Quality
As leaders, it's our responsibility to get creative and balance the urgency around deadlines with the needs of the project, team, and ultimately the end customers we serve. While a circus-level rush launch may provide a brief illusion of progress, the inevitable technical debt and rework required mean we'll simply be doing it twice—first haphazardly, then properly while walking through the preventable fires we lit ourselves.
Conclusion
True efficiency isn't about chasing the fastest path but about planning the right pace that protects quality, mitigates risks, and properly sets the stage for flawless execution that fully delivers on objectives. Let's do it well the first time, not just do it first.
