All the money in the world won’t buy you a single extra second of time; but, without time, you couldn’t enjoy the benefits of having all the money in the world.
In the workplace, it’s the one thing that managers never have enough. “I don’t have time” is the most common reason managers have for failing to do the critical leadership activities - communication, coaching, development, planning, and so on.
It’s not that managers don’t understand that they need more time to do those things, they just never seem to have any extra time laying around. However, although managers constantly complain they never have enough of time, it’s revealing to see how they invest what they do have.
There is an old brain teaser that goes like this: “I will offer you two things today and today only. You must choose one, and the offer expires in one minute.
First, I will offer you $1 million dollars in cash, in your hands today. Or, as an alternative, I will offer you a single penny today. Then, tomorrow I will pay you double that amount, and I will continue to double the amount each day for a grand total of 30 days. You would receive one cent today, two cents tomorrow, then four cents, then eight cents, and so on until you reach thirty days. Which one would you choose?”
You get $1 million, in cash. Right this minute.
Or, in 7 days you could accumulate...let’s see...1+2+4+8+16+32+64... a show-stopping $1.27 for ALL 7 days combined.
Let’s face it, there are a lot of things you can do with a million dollars in cash in hand. And $1.27 is downright meaningless. But, you’re thinking, maybe you just need to be patient. Maybe this can go somewhere.
Well, at the end of two weeks, on Day 14, your payday will be a whopping $81.92. Fourteen days of pay and you have accumulated $163.83. Not exactly a million bucks. For two weeks of waiting, you have less than two hundred bucks, which is not even enough to make a decent car payment. Meanwhile, the dude with the million dollars is tooling around in a Ferrari - with a free and clear title.
However, to be fair, maybe you just need to give it a little more time. There’s got a be something to this, right? Or why would I make you the offer?
So, things start to look a little better at the end of the third week. On Day 21, you get a nice stack of cash, exactly $10,485.76. However, your total income for 21 days – Three weeks – is only about $21,000.00. Not terrible, but it is still a long, long, LONG way from a million dollars.
Like $979,000 away.
Looks like you should’ve gone with the million bucks in cash. Maybe you thought there had to be something tricky about that penny offer, and you decided to take a chance. But, if you’re like most people, you looked at all those stacks of Benjamins and jumped on that million bucks.
Good call!
Well, no, it wasn’t. Sorry, I was just trying to make you feel better. Actually, you were unwise to take the $1 million.
In Week 4, that would’ve become crystal clear. On Day 25, your payday is over $165K. On Day 28, your haul is seven-figures – more than $1.3 million. Your final cash payout on Day 30 is over $5.3 million.
All in, for the 30 days, starting at one penny, you would have accumulated over $10.7 million.
This illustration has been around a long time, and it is typically used to illustrate the power of compounding – doubling an amount every day for 30 days provides a crushing return on your investment.
The problem is that the allure of immediate gain can be really, REALLY difficult to ignore, especially when the long-term return is not clearly fixed in your mind. However, one thing is certain, if the pain is bad enough, some people will opt for the $1 million today even if they know they are only 30 days away from $10 million.
Leaders make this mistake a lot.
There are a variety of things that leaders fail to do that can have that compounding effect on performance, but they never seem to get around to doing them. Leaders will even freely admit they need to do those things – they WANT to do those things – but they just don’t have time.
So, they continue to invest in short-term relief.
- They continue to step in front of employees and do their work for them – because they don’t have time to teach and coach.
- They continue to make every decision – because they don’t have time to coach employees how to make think.
- They continue to solve every problem – because they just don’t have time to explain all the details to the employee.
Unfortunately, each of these short-term fixes have longer-term implications. Employees don’t learn, they don’t engage, and they don’t contribute their own creativity and thinking. They work without purpose and direction, and wonder why no one ever tells them anything.
Which means, very clearly, that those time savings provide absolutely NO RETURN other than to briefly relieve the pain. And it never gets better. Ever. You wind up paying far more in terms of time than you ever save in the short-term. The short-term time-saver turns into the black hole for leaders.
There is never enough time because...THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH TIME.
To your greater success!
Peter Mclees, Leadership Trainer and Coach
petercmclees@gmail.com
Mobile: 323-854-1713
P. S. Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping ports, restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, sales teams, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies, and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength and the teamwork necessary for growth. Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.
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