You Can’t Have It All!

Posted on November 04, 2011 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.

CHEAP, FAST, or GOOD…

When a leader (or leadership team) plans to bring about significant change or growth in a department (or entire organization), they usually want to make the change cheap and fast – while still achieving a good outcome.

But there is a problem. A governing “law of change” states that when planning a major change – a leader can only attain 2 of the 3. A leader cannot garnish all three of these qualities at once.

A leader (or leadership team) can either pursue the change initiative:

“Cheap & Fast” (resulting in a compromise of quality)

“Fast & Good” (resulting in major outlay of resources)

“Cheap & Good” (where sufficient time is available to overcome any lack of resources)

** But the bottom line is… as a leader, you cannot expect to get all three of these qualities at once. The “Law of Change” will force you to choose. To make a hard choice regarding how you really want the change process to play out. So remember, though you may want all three – you can only have two!

** Think of a change process you are undertaking… Are you trying to break this governing “Law of Change”, or have you come to peace regarding which 2 qualities you will leverage?