The Cost of Being Too Busy to See What Matters

In 1973, two Princeton researchers, John Darley and Daniel Batson, conducted an experiment with theology students preparing to become ministers.

The students were asked to prepare a short talk. Some were given the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of a traveller who finds a wounded stranger on the road and stops to help him, expecting nothing in return.

The students were then told to go to another building to deliver their talks.

Along the way, each passed a man slumped in a doorway, coughing and groaning, apparently in need of help. The man was part of the experiment.

The researchers had given the students different instructions. Some were told they had plenty of time. Others were told they were already late.

Of those who weren't in a hurry, 63% stopped to help. Among those told they were running late, only 10% did.

The subject of their talk made no statistically significant difference. Even students who had just been thinking about the Good Samaritan sometimes walked past a person who needed help.

These were people preparing for a profession centred on helping others. They knew what mattered. Some had just spent time reflecting on it. But when they were in a hurry, their behaviour no longer reflected that priority.

I see a similar pattern in companies.

People know what they're trying to achieve. They care about the goals. They're committed to their work. Yet they can become so occupied with the tasks associated with those goals that they stop noticing opportunities that could make a much greater difference.

A salesperson is focused on closing the deals in their pipeline but overlooks a relationship that could open an entirely new market.

A product team is busy delivering the next release but never questions whether customers will still need that product in two years.

A manager spends every day reviewing performance, solving problems and improving operations, without finding the time to ask whether the business should be moving in a different direction.

Everyone is working hard. Targets are being tracked. Meetings are taking place. Tasks are being completed.

But the opportunities that could change the future of the business often sit outside those tasks.

The problem isn't always that people fail to understand what matters. Sometimes they're simply too busy to act on it.

When doing things better becomes the problem

Most companies are built to improve what they already do.

They set annual targets, allocate resources, define responsibilities and measure progress. There are good reasons for all of this. Businesses need consistency, accountability and results.

But these systems also shape what people pay attention to.

When a manager finally finds time to think about the future, the first question is often:

How can we keep doing what we do, just a little better?

How can we increase sales by another 10%? How can we reduce costs? How can we improve conversion rates? How can we make the existing process more efficient?

These are necessary questions. But they assume that what we're doing today is still what we should be doing tomorrow.

For companies like Nokia and Yahoo, continuing to optimise established businesses while the market was changing became part of what made them business school case studies.

They had resources, talent, customers and established positions in their industries. Their difficulties weren't simply the result of people failing to work hard enough. They struggled to adapt their strategies and organisations as the foundations of their markets changed.

Sometimes the greatest risk to a successful company is the success of its existing business.

It's profitable, familiar and measurable. Everyone knows how to make it work a little better.

A fundamentally different opportunity, on the other hand, may initially look uncertain, distracting or even threatening to what the company has already built.

And it's easy to keep postponing that opportunity when everyone is busy delivering this year's targets.

The decisions that changed the direction of a business

Consider Nvidia, Apple and Tesla.

Their histories are very different, and none of their successes can be reduced to a single decision. But each offers an example of recognising possibilities beyond the business as it existed at the time.

Nvidia: Looking beyond gaming

Nvidia was founded in 1993 with a focus on graphics technology for gaming and multimedia.

Its graphics processing units became essential to making increasingly sophisticated video games possible. It had a successful business serving a growing market.

Nvidia could have spent the following decades focusing exclusively on making better graphics cards for gamers.

Instead, it recognised that the parallel processing power of GPUs could be useful far beyond rendering images.

In 2006, Nvidia introduced CUDA, a computing architecture that made it possible for developers and researchers to use GPUs for general-purpose computing.

The opportunity wasn't obvious to everyone at the time. The investment required new software, a developer ecosystem and patience in markets that were still developing.

Years later, GPUs became essential to advances in deep learning. Nvidia's technology helped power the AlexNet breakthrough in 2012, and the company went on to become a major supplier of computing infrastructure for AI.

Nvidia didn't abandon gaming. It saw that a technology built for one purpose could become fundamental to something much bigger.

The important decision was to invest in that possibility long before the scale of today's AI market was apparent.

Apple: Choosing what not to do

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company had a complicated product portfolio and was struggling financially.

One of his most consequential decisions was to dramatically reduce the number of products Apple was developing.

Instead of trying to compete across numerous categories and variations, Apple concentrated its computer strategy around four main products: a desktop and a laptop for consumers, and a desktop and a laptop for professionals.

That meant cancelling projects, disappointing teams and walking away from work in which the company had already invested.

The decision wasn't about getting employees to work harder across the existing portfolio. It was about deciding that much of the portfolio shouldn't exist.

Nearly a decade later, Apple made another major bet.

The mobile phone market was dominated by companies with extensive experience producing handsets. Apple entered with a different idea of what a phone could be.

In 2007, the company introduced the iPhone, combining a phone, an internet device and an iPod into a product controlled through a multi-touch screen.

Rather than competing primarily through better physical keyboards, more buttons or incremental hardware improvements, Apple helped redefine the user experience.

These were different decisions at different points in Apple's history, but they shared an important principle: progress sometimes requires letting go of what you're already doing.

Tesla: Building a market, not just a car

Tesla faced a different challenge.

In the early 2000s, electric cars were widely associated with limited range, compromised performance and niche demand.

Rather than starting with an inexpensive mass-market car, Tesla's early strategy was to build a high-performance electric sports car.

In its 2006 master plan, Tesla described a sequence: begin with an expensive Roadster, use the experience and resources to develop a more affordable car, and eventually reach a broader market.

The Roadster wasn't intended to be the final destination. It was a way to begin developing the technology, capabilities and market needed for something larger.

Tesla also invested in charging infrastructure, recognising that making electric vehicles attractive required addressing more than the vehicle itself.

The challenge wasn't simply to build a better electric car. It was to make the ownership experience viable enough for electric cars to compete more broadly.

The strategy involved significant risks, and Tesla's execution has not been without problems. But its early decisions helped demonstrate that electric vehicles could be desirable, high-performance products rather than only practical compromises.

What these three companies illustrate isn't that every bold decision succeeds.

It's that some of the most consequential business opportunities begin with questioning the boundaries of the business itself.

A graphics processor doesn't have to be only for gaming.

A computer company doesn't have to keep developing every product it has started.

An electric car company may need to help build the infrastructure around the car.

These possibilities require people who can connect ideas, challenge assumptions and recognise changes before they become obvious.

And those are difficult things to do when every hour is already occupied.

SALY: Same as Last Year

There's a term used in business and accounting: SALY, or Same As Last Year.

It's a practical shorthand for repeating a previous approach.

But I think SALY can also describe one of the most dangerous mindsets in business.

A company finishes the year having delivered essentially what it delivered the year before.

Revenue is similar. Processes are similar. Products are similar. The organisation has been busy, and the results aren't necessarily bad.

So it feels as though the company has maintained its position.

But it hasn't.

The market has had another twelve months to evolve. Customers have discovered new expectations. Competitors have experimented. New technologies have emerged. The cost of doing certain things has changed.

The company may still be in the same place, but the world around it isn't.

If you make no progress for a year, the result isn't zero. You've lost a year.

And when the world is moving forward, losing a year means moving backward in relative terms.

This doesn't mean every business needs to reinvent itself annually. Some things should remain consistent, and not every new trend deserves investment.

But maintaining a successful business and preparing for its future are two different responsibilities.

A company needs to be capable of both.

The question isn't only whether this year's results were better than last year's.

It's whether the organisation is better prepared for what comes next.

The management habit that worries me most

One of the patterns I encounter most often in organisations has less to do with technology or strategy than with how managers manage their teams.

Managers naturally want clarity about what everyone is doing.

They want responsibilities to be defined, tasks to be tracked and deadlines to be met. They worry that if employees become involved in too many discussions beyond their immediate responsibilities, they'll lose focus or become confused about priorities.

So they simplify people's roles.

One person is responsible for preparing reports. Another follows up with customers. Another manages a project timeline. Each person knows which tasks belong to them and what they need to deliver.

The manager holds the bigger picture, makes the connections and decides what everyone else should work on.

This can seem efficient. It makes work easier to assign, monitor and measure.

But it creates a problem that may not become visible until much later.

People can become very good at completing tasks without developing the ability to recognise which tasks matter, why they matter or whether something else would matter more.

An employee responsible for preparing a sales report may know exactly how to produce it but have little understanding of which market opportunities the company is pursuing.

Someone organising a customer event may know every logistical detail without understanding the relationships or strategic objectives the event is meant to advance.

A project coordinator may be excellent at tracking deadlines but never be invited into the discussions that explain why the project exists or how its objectives connect to the wider organisation.

It's not that these employees lack the ability to think strategically.

They may simply have had very few opportunities to practise.

And strategic thinking doesn't develop automatically with seniority. It develops through exposure, responsibility, questioning and experience.

If a person is never encouraged to connect their work to a bigger objective, we shouldn't be surprised when they struggle to make those connections later.

The manager may believe they're protecting the team's focus.

In reality, they may be limiting the team's development.

Clarity doesn't require limiting people's perspective

There's an important distinction between giving employees clear responsibilities and restricting their understanding of the business.

People can have well-defined roles while still knowing where the organisation is going, what problems it's trying to solve and why those problems matter.

In fact, understanding the bigger picture can make someone better at prioritising their immediate work.

When people know only their tasks, they need to return to their manager whenever circumstances change.

When they understand the objective, they have a better chance of recognising what matters, adapting their approach and raising opportunities nobody specifically asked them to find.

A manager shouldn't have to give everyone complete freedom to work on whatever interests them.

But employees do need the context to exercise judgement.

Consider two ways of assigning the same work.

One manager says, “I need you to contact these 30 companies and report back by Friday.”

Another explains, “We're trying to enter a new market. We believe these companies could help us understand the demand, but we don't yet know which relationships will matter most. Start with this list, and if you see a better route, bring it forward.”

The task may be similar. The employee's understanding of their responsibility is not.

In the second case, they're invited to think about the purpose, not only the instructions.

Over time, those small differences shape what kind of team an organisation develops.

AI is making this problem more urgent

For years, organisations have relied heavily on employees who can reliably process information, follow instructions, prepare documents, coordinate workflows and complete defined tasks.

These capabilities still matter.

But AI is becoming increasingly capable of supporting or performing much of this work.

It can prepare a first draft of a report, analyse a dataset, summarise a meeting, organise information, generate alternatives and help automate repeatable processes.

Of course, AI still makes mistakes. It needs context, judgement, verification and human accountability. Not every task can or should be automated.

But the direction is clear enough to raise an important management question.

What happens to a team that has spent years being trained primarily to complete tasks when technology can perform more and more of those tasks?

If employees have rarely been encouraged to question assumptions, connect ideas, understand business objectives or recognise new opportunities, those abilities won't suddenly appear when AI takes over part of their workload.

They'll have become better task executors in a world where task execution is becoming less scarce.

And managers will discover that the capabilities they need most are the ones their management practices haven't helped employees develop.

This is why I believe preparing teams for AI requires more than teaching them to use AI tools.

It requires changing what we expect people to contribute.

The future value of an employee won't come only from producing an accurate report. It may come from recognising something in that report that nobody was looking for.

Not simply following up with customers, but identifying an unmet need that could lead to a new product.

Not just delivering a project successfully, but noticing that the assumptions behind it have changed.

Not only knowing the answers, but recognising which questions we should be asking.

These abilities are difficult to reduce to a task list. They require curiosity, context, judgement and the freedom to think beyond immediate assignments.

And they need to be developed while people are doing their current jobs, not after those jobs have changed.

What should we do with the time AI gives us?

Most conversations about AI in the workplace begin with productivity.

How much faster can we write? How many hours can we save? How many more tasks can we complete with the same team?

These are legitimate benefits.

But if AI saves us five hours and we immediately fill those hours with five more hours of tasks, we've improved our output without necessarily improving our ability to recognise what matters.

We've made the calendar more productive, but not the organisation more thoughtful.

I believe the more consequential opportunity is to reclaim some of that time for work that rarely appears on task lists.

Understanding what's changing in our industry. Talking to someone outside our usual network. Questioning why we follow a particular process. Exploring a customer problem that doesn't fit an existing product. Bringing people from different functions together to see what connections emerge.

This doesn't mean replacing disciplined execution with endless brainstorming.

Ideas still need to become decisions, experiments and results.

But good execution and good judgement are not competing priorities. We need both.

And if AI allows us to spend less time on certain forms of execution, we should be deliberate about how we invest the time we recover.

Managers have a particularly important role here.

They can give teams more visibility into the purpose behind their work. They can invite people into discussions beyond their immediate responsibilities. They can reward employees for recognising meaningful opportunities, not only for completing assignments.

They can also create room to question existing work rather than constantly adding more of it.

Sometimes the most valuable contribution an employee can make is to suggest a new direction.

Sometimes it's to explain why a task no longer needs to be done.

And sometimes it's to notice something important that nobody else has put on the agenda.

Making room to notice

The theology students in the Princeton experiment weren't indifferent to helping others. Their behaviour changed when they were made to feel rushed.

The lesson isn't that urgency is always bad, or that companies should abandon deadlines and targets.

It's that what we pay attention to is shaped by the conditions in which we work.

When an organisation is structured entirely around completing predefined tasks, people become very good at attending to those tasks.

But the next opportunity may not arrive as an assigned responsibility.

It may appear as an unexpected conversation, a new customer behaviour, a technological shift or a question that challenges something everyone has taken for granted.

We can't expect people to recognise these signals if we never give them the context, responsibility or time to look beyond their immediate work.

As AI becomes more capable, completing tasks efficiently will increasingly become a baseline expectation.

The ability to recognise what is worth doing, connect what others see as unrelated and make informed decisions about an uncertain future will matter even more.

We spend a great deal of time making sure everyone is busy. We should spend just as much effort making sure they're developing the ability to see what matters.

Because the greatest opportunity your company is missing may not be something your team has failed to complete.

It may be something nobody has had the time, or the freedom, to notice.

Sources

• Darley and Batson's 1973 Good Samaritan study: Stanford SPARQ, Take Time to Be Good
• Nvidia from graphics to CUDA and AlexNet: NVIDIA corporate timeline
• Apple's four-product strategy and the 2007 iPhone: Steve Jobs Archive
• Tesla's 2006 master plan: Tesla, Secret Master Plan