Timing is everything

Timing can turn a mediocre idea, product or service into a runaway success, but bad timing can also sink it just as easily. Unfortunately most people (and indeed, organisations) believe that timing is just luck, but it isn't. Nothing is further from the truth. Timing is as critical to the success of an organisation as strategy is. 

Unfortunately, even some of the most successful organisations consider timing as an afterthought. Their thinking follows a process that takes ideas, budget, market and so on and so forth into account long before a thought is ever given to timing. 

On the other hand, however, sometimes success is attributed to reasons under control of the organisation, while in reality, their success was an accident of timing, and in fact, they are pursuing sub-optimal strategies. While it is not useful to doubt oneself, what is necessary is self-reflection to understand if the decisions being made in the good times would carry your organisation in the bad ones.

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