Lately, I have noticed a difference in thinking between senior leaders and tech people. Senior leaders don’t really notice technology issues until they are issues, and they want them fixed immediately. Tech people on the other hand are always trying to plan for the issues but really can’t do all the work of figuring things out until they have the green light.
Sooner or later this issue can set the two groups onto a collision course. Once we have the go-ahead, we want to start teasing out every detail to make the very best choices for budget and capacity, all of which takes time. From leadership’s standpoint, once they say “go”, they are ready for it to happen.
So how do we handle this potential conflict? What is the balance between right now and the time required to plan every little detail?
A good starting point is to talk about what the goal is for the particular project. Is time of the essence? Is money tight? These two questions will help define which end of the spectrum your brain needs to think about this project.
FAST
If speed is the most important factor, money will probably not be spent in the most frugal fashion. When you are running fast, you end up making choices that are more expensive than if you had time to do the research necessary to figure out the best solution. If time matters the most, be ready to feel like you are throwing money around.
COST
If your budget is tight and therefore by default the most important value, you will most likely spend more time trying to figure out how to accomplish the goals and spend the least amount as possible.
At both extremes, there comes a time when you need to just get the work done. At a certain point, you just have to dive in and get it done. Otherwise, we could research something to death looking for the cheapest or most precise answer. Or with speed being the highest value, get all caught up making sure we are doing the exact right thing and then not making any decisions.
Working in production as long as I have, I probably fall on the side of wanting to research as long as possible, to save the most amount of money as possible and come up with the perfect solution. As a result, it can sometimes feel to my leaders like I’m not getting anything done.
I love how Seth Godin talks about “shipping”. The idea is that nothing will ever be fully done, and so you need to become disciplined to just get things out the door. Especially in the world of technology, the minute we decide to head in a certain direction, the technology will be obsolete. This can make the speed part of the equation so difficult to handle because we want to get the most technology for the money.
So what is the right balance of speed and cost? Somewhere in between. When I think about it, it might have more to do with what will help our church the most right now? Where is the momentum? Will we lose it if we take too long to figure out the perfect solution? Maybe we’ll lose it if we hurry up and make the wrong decisions.
Wherever it is, make sure that you are on the same page with your senior leaders in each given situation.
