The Hidden Cost of Moving Too Fast

The time change has me thinking about timing—and how our brains don’t always adjust as fast as our calendars.

Inside companies, it’s the same story. I often hear from frontline employees that they wish they knew what was coming more than a day or two in advance.

I get that more than I used to. I naturally think fast and move fast—I like to jump in with both feet. My son is wired differently. He needs time to process before he can adapt. What I once read as defiance was really his way of finding stability in new situations. When I move too quickly for him to process, he digs in.

Employees are similar. When leaders move faster than people can absorb, hesitation and silence often follow. It’s a signal that people are still catching up.

The Tension

Organizations pride themselves on agility, but often confuse speed with readiness.

Announcing a change isn’t the same as preparing people for it. When leaders hit “go” before giving teams time to process, what fills that space is often grumbling, confusion, and resistance.

A recent Workvivo report shows 42% of frontline workers say their company leadership is not good at communicating with them, and 69% want to better understand their company’s decisions. And, a Gartner survey of more than 2,850 employees revealed that 79% of employees have low trust in change.

When that pattern repeats—rapid rollouts, limited context, minimal recovery—momentum slows, adoption stalls, trust erodes, and employees burn out.

This processing gap: the space between when leadership decides and when employees digest.

The Insight

Consider how long it took your leadership team to plan for the change—how many conversations and iterations it took to align on next steps.

Your employees need time too. They need both mental and emotional runway to make sense of what’s changing.

Readiness builds when people have a chance to think, connect, and prepare.

The best communicators—and most effective leaders—know how to synchronize the clocks, aligning the organization’s planning timeline with employees’ learning curve so change feels guided and grounded.

Building this runway is a leadership capability that signals foresight, respect, and operational maturity.

The Business Impact

The cost of getting this wrong is substantial. Gartner’s 2025 study also revealed that just 32% of business leaders report achieving healthy change adoption by employees.

When employees don’t have time to process, execution suffers. Missteps, rework, and slowed adoption eat up the very speed leadership hoped to achieve.

The irony is that moving too quickly often creates the drag leaders were trying to avoid.

Yet the upside of getting it right is equally compelling. According to Gartner’s VP, Ingrid Laman, organizations with healthy change adoption see 2x higher year-over-year revenue growth—potentially worth $2.2 billion annually for companies with 50,000+ employees.

Sustainable speed—the kind that fuels growth and innovation—depends on people understanding why they’re changing and feeling equipped to deliver what comes next.

Guidance for Communicators

• Bring in the comms team early. If you’re only asking to “craft the message” at the end, it’s already too late to manage the runway.

• Build in think-time. Create a buffer between announcement and action—even a few days can make a difference.

• Equip managers. They’re the first place employees turn with questions, so give them context before the rollout hits.

• Stage the story. Treat change communication as a narrative, not a headline. Introduce why it matters to the employee before you ask people to move for the company.

• Consider a phased rollout. For larger or more complex changes, start with early adopters or pilot groups. Let them experience the change first and share their success stories. This not only builds credibility but helps validate the change before it scales—preventing the dreaded “rollout, regret, and rollback” cycle.

  
  

Guidance for Leaders

For senior leaders, agility starts with awareness. Announcing a change doesn’t close the loop—it opens a new phase of leadership.

When you give people the time and tools to process, you create the conditions for alignment, trust, and true forward momentum.

True agility is more than moving fast. It’s about helping everyone move together.

Giving space allows time for true alignment—which then creates acceleration and organizational velocity.