Time – we measure so many things by it.  Miles or kilometres per hour, revolutions per minute, dollars per day.  Time governs so much of what we do and it’s the one resource we can’t ever stop expending.  The march of time continues regardless.

In business, it’s rarely money that presents us with the biggest barrier to success, it’s time.  Time is the killer resource.  We need that software release, that big deal, that important new senior hire to start as quickly as humanly possible.  It’s never soon enough.  And what happens, to make things even worse?  Things always take longer to come to fruition than we hoped: pipeline is sluggish, deals slip, development is delayed.  These are complex things we do in business, with many variables.  Throw in the human element and you have a recipe for stuff not turning out as you planned.

To combat the ravages of time on your precious schedule, I offer these two seemingly contradictory pieces of advice.  Firstly, wherever you can, build slack into your planning, so you have room to manoeuvre and still be on time.  Secondly, don’t let work or what your doing simply fill the time available (much easier said than done).

It’s a fine balance, but isn’t everything that’s worth doing well?