Editorial
Just do it. It’s not just one company’s slogan: The phrase likely evoked a difficult project, initiative or decision that you’ve been putting off. As business leaders, we’re asked to make choices every day, but the hardest ones — the ones that fundamentally change how the organization operates — are most often postponed in some way. Whether you are divesting legacy products, shifting core business models or modernizing technology infrastructure, these significant changes can be the biggest hurdles to growth and innovation.
The quick sting of ripping off the Band-Aid is better than drawing out the pain. So why do we so often default to the latter scenario, hoping that difficult choices will magically resolve themselves? The true test of leadership is not in optimizing the routine decisions, but in making the difficult, often painful moves that enable agility and prevent the exponential cost of inaction (COI).
It is easier said than done. But the secret to courageous leadership isn’t just knowing what to do. It’s having the framework to successfully commit to and execute those difficult decisions.
Beware the Comfortable Drag
While you may find comfort in a period of procrastination, taking no action is not neutral. Delay is a decision. Dragging things out is also a constant drag on margins, morale and your competitive edge. You can consider it an insidious hidden tax that your organization will pay daily as long as you’re on pause.
To understand the pressure of the COI, consider these measurable consequences:
- Technical debt is a constantly growing, high-interest loan your organization takes out when it avoids modernizing IT infrastructure or streamlining processes. This debt translates to higher maintenance costs, increased security risks and slower time-to-market for new products.
- Opportunity cost can be a cruel wakeup call for many. Every month you spend debating whether to enter a new market, divest a legacy project or adopt an essential new platform is a month your agile competitors spend executing. These costs are not recoverable, and they go directly over to your competition.
- Talent attrition is inevitable when organizations aren’t proactive about necessary changes, like eliminating manual processes or automating workflows. Top talent who are focused on innovation will not wait for their organization to catch up. They will leave for a more forward-thinking competitor and their former organization will pay the high cost of replacing them.
How Procrastination Leads to Extinction
COI is abstract until you connect it to real-world strategic decisions. In my experience, two areas expose a leadership team’s preference for comfort over courage: 1) the inevitability of modernization and 2) the difficulty of letting go of the past.
Cloud migration is perhaps the clearest current example of a necessary, difficult decision that many organizations are facing today. Everyone knows the transition from self-hosted data centers to cloud infrastructure is a requirement for scale and resilience. Yet, leaders delay because they fear the high upfront costs, a migration period (and associated disruption), and the temporary chaos of shifting away from the old, familiar infrastructure.
From the Band-Aid perspective, the choice is clear. Moving to the cloud is no longer about gaining a competitive edge; it's about avoiding extinction. The short-term pain is dwarfed by the long-term risk of relying on hardware that will eventually buckle under modern demands.
Another common decision delay is sunsetting a legacy product or service line. This takes courage because this product or service line may still be profitable — on the other hand, it is absorbing a disproportionate amount of resources. It’s a project that’s easy to keep around because it’s proven, but the cost of delay is catastrophic.
Remaining tethered to the past distracts your research and development teams and prevents meaningful investment in the future. Courageous leaders understand that ending investment in an obsolete product, even though it may be profitable, is the only way to reallocate resources toward winning the future.
Moving from Paralysis to Progress
Acknowledging the delay and its impacts is the first step; acting on it is the ultimate test. To move from paralysis to execution, leaders need a new framework for decision-making that prioritizes agility over comfort. This will involve quantifying the inaction by calculating the COI, shepherding the organization through the inevitable comfort by staying focused on the purpose, and committing to “done,” rather than “perfect."
The shift from relying solely on ROI to also measuring COI will help business leaders comprehend the urgency of the situation. Start measuring the hidden taxes you are paying by staying with the status quo. What is the lost revenue, how much time is being wasted on operational inefficiencies, what are your maintenance fees and how much is talent churning? When the measurable price of standing still exceeds the risk of moving forward, the decision often makes itself.
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Next, to lead a team through inevitable discomfort, you must clearly articulate the “healthier state” that awaits after ripping off the Band-Aid. Your narrative must focus on freedom, not loss. For example, shifting to the cloud isn’t just about decommissioning servers; it’s about liberating your IT team from low-value maintenance tasks so they can become drivers of innovation. When employees understand that the pain has a purpose, they are far more willing to endure the transition.
Finally, hesitation often disguises itself as perfectionism. Leaders delay because they want to mitigate every possible risk before starting. This is a trap. Hard decisions require firm, visible commitment. Once the metaphorical Band-Aid is off, resist the urge to apply temporary half-measures to soothe the transition. Choose the decisive path and manage the obstacles as you come to them. In a rapidly changing market, imperfect execution today is better than a perfect plan next year.
In today’s fast-paced digital world, the greatest differentiators are speed and agility — and both are killed by delay. I challenge you to look at your organization today. Identify your biggest Band-Aid and commit to a deadline for its removal.
Editor's Note: Read more about managing change in your organization:
- How to Manage Change With Change-Weary Teams — How can you shepherd an exhausted team through yet another change sprung upon them?
- Heather Knuffke on Making Change Stick at the U.S. Air Force — Air Force enterprise change manager Heather Knuffke gives an inside look at the digital transformation underway at the U.S. Air Force.
- Work Intelligence Can Help Your Organization Manage Change the Healthy Way — The work intelligence market is forecast to grow to $22.5 billion by 2028, and that comes with great opportunities — and some threats.
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