"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen all at once." - Albert Einstein

I have been giving this topic quite a bit of thought recently.  Time...such a precious, yet fleeting commodity. 

Mention innovation, new products, ideas, creativity or brainstorming in most organizational settings today and you are going to hear, "We don't have the time." 

Organizations are starting to comprehend the important competitive growth advantage that ideas and innovation provide and yet, they don't have the time to put a program together.  Yes, its important...but there's too much on our plate already.

They also don't have the time to allow people to sit and think of new ideas or the future of the organization.  Too much going on.  Gotta get those numbers up this quarter.

Even if somehow, some way, an idea was able to get some attention, no one has the time to move the idea into reality.  People are nothing more than percentages of resource availability.  Fractionalized percentages of resource availability at that.  This project needs attention...that project needs attention...and when do I work on my real job?

Ideas need time.  Creativity needs time.  Exploration needs time.  Piloting/Prototyping needs time.  Innovation needs time.  Implementation needs time.

In a world where we have reduced ourselves to fractionalized percentages of resource time, working 20% on this project, 40% on that project, 30% on core work and 10% in useless meetings, why are we shocked when quality suffers, rework costs are high and growth (if it exists at all) is incremental?

Why do we act surprised when morale, joy, passion and engagement are lost?

And...where do we expect the growth we all predict on our fancy financials slides, born only from new ideas, to come from?

Make the tough decisions.  Prioritize.  Stop some things.  Start some new things.  Demand thought time.  Demand future vision from everyone. 

CREATE TIME!!!

TODAY!!!