The Cost of Waiting to Be Ready
There’s a habit many capable leaders develop without realizing it.
We wait.
We wait until the idea is fully formed, or until we’ve thought through every edge case, or until we’re sure we won’t be wrong.
We tell ourselves this is discipline, rigor, and responsibility. But honestly, it is usually just emotional procrastination. We are putting off the hard thing, which is saying “Go.”
Readiness Is a Private Standard
The thing with “being ready” is that it is an internal standard, but leadership decisions are made based on external signals.
At senior levels, no one has complete information, and decisions are made under uncertainty, time pressure, and competing incentives. Most of the time, no one is fully “ready” to make the decision, but they have to.
When you wait until you’re fully ready, what others will see is hesitation. They can’t see the thinking you’re doing internally; they only see the decision NOT being made.
Your rigor is invisible, and your insights stay private.
And in that gap, others are taking action.
Mergers Taught Me This the Hard Way
I learned this lesson most clearly through mergers: repeatedly, and from both sides. I’ve been on the acquiring side at Lycos and Warner Bros. Discovery. I’ve been on the acquired side at Lightningcast.
If there’s any environment where uncertainty is the norm, it’s a merger.
In those moments, signals matter more than “readiness”. Leaders are trying to answer questions like:
Where is the real risk?
What’s fragile?
What will break if we move too fast or too slow?
Who is tracking the broader system?
And when leaders are making these judgments, you need to be part of the process and discussion. Otherwise, they will interpret your waiting as disengagement.
Early in my career, I was careful. I waited until I had fully thought something through before raising it. I didn’t want to introduce noise or speculation during already chaotic periods. But decisions were being shaped while I was waiting, and I was not part of them.
Over time, and across multiple mergers, a pattern became impossible to ignore:
My silence read as disengagement. Or worse, as lack of awareness.
Why Quiet Leaders Are Especially Vulnerable
Quiet leaders often have good reasons to wait before speaking up.
They don’t want to:
Add to the noise
Distract from execution
Surface half-formed ideas
Create unnecessary alarm
Those instincts are not wrong, but they can sometimes do more harm than good.
Senior leaders don’t need finished answers in moments of uncertainty. They need people who are tracking the terrain in real time and willing to name what they see as it’s forming.
The person who speaks early doesn’t have to be right. They just have to help orient the group. Quiet leaders often miss their chance to be this person.
The Real Cost Isn’t Being Wrong
Most quiet leaders assume that the risk of speaking too early is being wrong. In practice, the much bigger risk to their careers is speaking too late and being irrelevant.
When you delay:
Others frame the problem
Constraints harden
Options narrow
The organization commits to a path
Once this has all happened, even a better idea can sound like resistance instead of leadership.
I’ve seen this repeatedly during large-scale change. The leaders who influenced outcomes weren’t the ones with perfect plans. They were the ones who surfaced emerging risks, named tradeoffs early, and stayed engaged as the picture evolved.
What Senior Leaders Actually Listen For
At higher levels, leaders aren’t listening for answers. They know no one has the right answers. Instead, they’re listening for how you reason under uncertainty.
They want to hear:
What you think might be happening
What you’re watching closely
Where you see risk or leverage forming
How you’re thinking about second- and third-order effects
That kind of thinking doesn’t arrive fully baked. It develops as you engage. Waiting for the perfect plan before you engage is a good way to guarantee it will never fully form.
What Changed for Me
Later in my career, I began to move faster. I didn’t become less careful, but I learned that timing is part of the work.
I became more willing to say:
“This is still forming, but here’s what I’m seeing.”
“I don’t have the answer yet, but I think the risk is here.”
“This may change, but if this pattern holds, we should be ready for it.”
Those statements aren’t reckless or overcommitting.
They show you’re thinking with the organization as it moves, not reporting to it after the fact.
Speaking Earlier Doesn’t Mean Speaking More
This isn’t an argument for talking constantly or flooding meetings with half-baked ideas.
It’s an argument for entering the conversation sooner, especially for quiet leaders who feel more comfortable waiting.
Quiet leaders don’t need to increase volume; they just need to adjust timing.
Even one sentence spoken early on can shape the entire arc of a discussion.
The Tradeoff to Name Clearly
Waiting to be ready feels safe, while speaking earlier feels exposed.
But the real tradeoff isn’t safety versus risk; it’s clarity versus invisibility.
Quiet leaders who want broader impact have to accept a hard truth:
Your best thinking only matters if it arrives in time to influence the outcome.
That’s the cost of waiting is being useless, even if you are correct.