Time Core · Golden Opportunities · Module
Capacity to act
Whether the organisation can actually move — people who could be released, money that is not committed, and authority that does not require a cycle.
The idea
How it works
An organisation with every person allocated and every pound committed cannot take an opportunity however clearly it sees one. The constraint is capacity rather than judgement.
Slack is expensive and is exactly what makes opportunism possible. An organisation that runs at full utilisation has chosen efficiency over optionality, which is a legitimate choice and should be a conscious one.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Hold some uncommitted budget
A small reserve outside the annual plan. Its purpose is to be available rather than to be spent.
- 02
Know who could be released
Which two or three people could be freed within a fortnight, and what would stop.
- 03
Pre-agree the authority
What can be committed without a cycle, so that speed does not require an exception.
- 04
Accept the cost of slack
It is real. An organisation with none is optimised for the plan and unable to respond to anything else.
One level in
The components of capacity to act
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
An organisation at full utilisation has chosen efficiency over optionality. That is legitimate and should be conscious.
The other modules in golden opportunities
Recognising them
How an unusual opportunity gets noticed and raised, given that it arrives inconveniently and usually to someone without a route to escalate.
LearnQualifying
Establishing quickly whether it is what it appears to be — on a shorter process than the standard one, since the standard one takes longer than the opportunity lasts.
LearnThe record
What was taken, what was declined and what happened afterwards — the only way to know whether the organisation’s judgement is any good.
Learn