Time is the primary currency.

A project can be very attractive financially. But if its effect appears in four years, it has to be weighed against an alternative that delivers a smaller result within six months. This does not mean the faster option should always be chosen. It means that time should be consciously factored into the economics of a decision.

Because over those four years the market, the customer, the competition, the cost of capital, the people, the technology and the organisation’s capacity to keep going all change.

Companies analyse the cost of a decision very carefully. They analyse the cost of not taking it far less often.

Yet every month of holding on to a wrong price can mean lost margin. Every month of keeping an unprofitable location means another loss. Every month of excess inventory means frozen capital. Every month without a clear project owner means delayed results. Every month without a strategic decision means more operational decisions made on the old model. Time is not a neutral backdrop.

Time works either for us or against us.

The most visible waste of time is inactivity. But in companies something more dangerous is far more common: apparent activity. Meetings, analyses, successive versions of presentations, consultations, steering committees, pilot projects with no decision on what happens after the pilot.

The organisation is working. People are busy. And yet the key decision has still not been taken. This is one of the most expensive forms of lost time, because it looks like work.

The point is not to make decisions rashly. It is to shorten the time between: information → analysis → decision → action → measurement.

A good organisation does not need to know everything faster. It needs to recognise sooner when it already has enough information to act. Waiting for one hundred per cent certainty very often means taking a decision when its value has already declined.

The same decision taken today and a year from now is not always the same decision. Entering a market may make sense ahead of the competition. A price change may work before customer expectations become entrenched. Restructuring can be a controlled choice as long as the company has liquidity. Changing the model can be an investment before it becomes a necessity.

That is why timing is part of strategy. Not an add-on to it.

Here an important difference emerges between time and leverage. Leverage answers the question: where will one decision change the most? Time answers a different one: when should that decision be taken for its value to be greatest?

One is about concentration. The other about the moment. And very often the value of an excellent decision is destroyed precisely by taking it too late.

The board allocates capital. But it is just as important where it allocates its own attention and the organisation’s time. If senior management spends three months analysing a topic that might improve results by 0.5%, while postponing a decision that could change the whole company’s model, it too is making an allocation. It is simply one that does not show in the income statement.

The board’s time is one of the company’s most expensive resources. It should be directed where the value of the decision is greatest.

A good strategic question is therefore not only: “How much can we earn from this?” But also: “How much time must we invest before this result becomes real?” And, more important still: “What will happen in the meantime if we do nothing?”

That is why I treat time as the primary currency of transformation. Because a result can be measured in money. But the possibility of achieving it very often depends on the moment.