Time is Money! - Heading towards the right race?

by wouterduijndam

It's all about the right speed for the appropriate context - often going slow in the pre-race results in winning the race!

Haven't you heard "time is money!" by your boss or the executive board meeting, when there had been a proposal to improve operations or certain business processes?

Often from the manager's perspective this is meant in the sense, of not "wasting" money through conversations or dialogue dealing with the problem at hand.

How have you learned best in the past to deal with obstacles or constraints in your life? Certainly mostly without time pressure. We took the paths of learning that fitted our personal experience and accumulated knowledge. To do that we needed TIME. 

Where and in which context could a manager allow himself to let the use of a bit of extra time (within the set time frame available) to find better solutions for pressing problems today?

Best area will be a process within the organization that is most troubling but rather not having relevant direct impact on the organization's outcome. Do the small experiment with an outreaching impact on the wealth of the organization.

Let an outsider, or by-stander have a deeper look at your business (at best a customer will be also involved) to advice you. Done in a lean thinking way, doing an insightful deep 2-hours conversation could already be really helpful to open up opportunity alleys of the future.

What do you think, would that be worth for your organization?

Questions or Answers - that's the QUESTION

Imagine you are faced with a tough problem at hand, new and complex. Imagine further that is a situation where you are asked to give advice or your expertise. The client is seeking a solution to the problem he can't solve with his own resources.

What to do?

Doing the analysis on what the problem might be and already been addressed by the client, provide a solution presentation to client. There will be a presentation in front of client management team. Then implementation of the recommendation.

STOP • Rewind the story • RESET

There is perhaps another way, or?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker

• What is it that is really pressing or hurting the client?

• What is the right question to find out (also for the client to find out himself)?