Hidden Costs of Waiting

Sometimes the best of marketing (careers, campaigns) stall, and not because of talent, but because of the heavy impact of “waiting.”

Waiting for the mythical and just straight fantasy “right time.”

Waiting until the plan is perfect.

Waiting for consensus.

Even waiting until the fire is out.

Hey, I’ve done it. I’ve sat on campaigns until they were airtight, only to watch the market shift and my airtight plan become breathless and irrelevant. I’ve held back content until it was “polished,” only to see someone else ship their rough draft first and take the conversation. I’ve even waited until an element of leadership was ready to get bold and get in market… only to… never… do… that.

In leadership, waiting feels safe because it’s comfortable. Nobody typically gets mad at you for waiting. It’s just… safe is expensive.

At Dell, the campaigns that moved the needle weren’t the ones we perfected over quarters. They were the ones we launched, tested, optimized, and scaled. Same in life right now. If I waited for perfect conditions to publish these Field Notes or launch OPERATOR as a framework, I’d still be staring at a blank doc.

The cost of waiting is invisible at first. It looks like “patience” and it feels like “caution.” But over time, it robs teams of momentum, it starves pipeline, and it stalls careers.

Can we just… not?

Leaders don’t wait. They adapt. They learn in public.

The choice isn’t between fast and perfect. It’s between momentum and stagnation.

And stagnation is far more costly, and I’m certainly not just talking about revenue or budget.