Top 10 Reasons Why Leaders Don’t Move Faster

1. This is a new situation.  I have never seen anything like it before.

2. I see the upside and it’s very exciting, but I’m not sure I see all the pitfalls.  What could I (or my team) be missing?

3. Some key contributors on my team are overly skeptical and only grudgingly compliant.  I really don’t have the time and energy to be constantly “selling” them on the breakthrough potential this initiative could represent.

4. The day/week/month starts out great, but I quickly get bogged down in the minutiae.  It seems like everything is incredibly important.

5. The problem is incredibly complex.  It requires such broad insight and depth of expertise in so many areas that I can’t get my arms around it.

6. My team sees talking to me and engaging in other interactive activities amongst themselves as actual achievements.  If we’re talking about it, we must be making it happen!

7. There seems to be a lot of starts and stops.  We start out great, but then we get distracted and can’t get back to what we were doing without backing up a few steps each time.

8. It’s extremely difficult to create the right sense of urgency.  My team is way too tolerant and accommodating of each other.  Meanwhile, we’re getting our clock cleaned by the competition!

9. I can’t eliminate enough of the uncertainty surrounding this decision to make myself comfortable.  I have trouble accepting the potential for (even the smallest) failure by me or my team.

10. I’m constantly faced with conflicting ideas and comparable alternatives.  It’s too hard to choose.