Are You Too Fast Or Too Slow?
In September 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I introduced an idea I had been shaping for years: the concept of getting Unstuck.
The timing, I thought, was perfect. Offices were closed. Schools were shuttered. Travel had stopped. Everyone was working from kitchen tables and spare bedrooms, juggling uncertainty and exhaustion. Surely this was the moment when people would want to rethink how they worked, lived, and adapted.
It turns out, they didn't.
Remote work and hybrid arrangements weren’t yet strategies; they were emergency fixes. Artificial intelligence was barely on the horizon. Chatbots didn’t exist. And many industries—finance, law, tech, even parts of retail—were recording their best quarters ever. For them, the story wasn’t disruption. It was persistence. Staying the course. Continuing as is.
Which meant my message—that humans don’t get stuck, we are stuck—collided with the mood of the moment and their perceived reality. People didn’t feel stuck. They felt anxious, stretched, even proud of holding steady. They weren’t imagining transformation when they were still clinging to the hope that “normal” would soon return.
The idea, as it turned out, was right. My timing was wrong.
The irony is that Unstuck grew out of research into how the brain resists change. We don’t leap forward when conditions are uncertain; we grip tighter. Stasis is the default. The brain conserves energy. Thermodynamics favors equilibrium. Movement is costly. Stillness feels safe.
And yet I forgot the very principle I was teaching. I assumed urgency would make people receptive. I assumed crisis would equal willingness.
The result was predictable. I delivered clumsy presentations. I wrote essays that fell flat. I made videos that vanished into the digital void. My audiences weren’t ignorant. They weren’t blind. They just weren’t ready.
The Two Clocks
This is the paradox every leader faces: change runs on two clocks.
The external clock tracks the world outside—markets, competitors, technology, culture. It ticks relentlessly. Miss it, and you fall behind.
The internal clock belongs to the people inside your organization—your teams, employees, even your customers. It moves at its own pace, often slower than leaders would like. It doesn’t budge until people grow weary of the old way, until they have the mental and emotional space to consider something different.
Most leaders watch only the external clock. They see where the market is going and assume their people will follow. They push the what and the how without pausing to ask if the when is right. The strategy looks solid. In practice, it collapses.
In my case, I ignored both. I was too early for the external moment, pointing to a future no one believed had arrived. And I misread the internal one, mistaking survival for acceptance.
What I learned in 2020 is that timing isn’t just calculation. It’s awareness. Connection depends not only on where people are, but when they are.
A manager can introduce a smart new process, but if the team is stretched thin, it feels like a burden. A coach can give the right advice, but if the player isn’t ready, it lands as criticism. A spouse can speak the perfect words, but in the wrong moment they only widen the distance.
This is the challenge every leader faces. The external clock—markets, technology, competitors—ticks relentlessly. But the internal one moves at its own pace. People don’t run on the same schedule as the marketplace. They need signals, space, and sometimes struggle before they can move forward.
An idea is like a seed. Even the strongest will fail if it’s thrown onto frozen ground. The strength of the idea matters. But the state of the soil decides.
That’s why when is as critical as what or how. Too late makes you irrelevant. Too early feels indistinguishable from wrong.
The difference isn’t brilliance. It’s timing.
Tips
Why Timing Fails Us
The challenge is that timing never announces itself. It isn’t written in a quarterly report or forecast model. It hides in subtler signals.
Language shifts. Listen to the metaphors people use. When “back to normal” quietly becomes “new normal,” then simply “different,” minds are loosening.
Behavioral cracks. Watch for small deviations. Change begins not with revolutions, but with hairline fractures—one person experimenting, one team questioning, one assumption challenged.
Emotional fatigue. Resistance peaks at the beginning of a crisis. True openness comes later, when exhaustion sets in and the old ways no longer feel safe.
External alignment. Look beyond your walls. When cultural or technological currents begin to rhyme with your message, the conditions are warming.
These are the signs that the ground is thawing, that the seed you’ve been carrying might finally take root.
In the end, leadership is not just foresight. It is patience. It is empathy. It is knowing the moment.