They think slow decision making is a virtue. There are some firms in this business whose owners pride themselves in never making a quick decision. How can a firm make timely decisions if everything has to be discussed by a group of people? How often does this group meet to make decisions? How well does that work? Not to mention what happens when someone in the firm gets a response they don’t like from one member of this board so they go to someone else who gives them a different answer? Confusion abounds. He told me the firm was “run by a board.” Red flags immediately went up in my mind when I heard this. One time, I was asking one of our consultants some questions about a new client Zweig Group took on and the role of their CEO. These kinds of structures and role definitions are counter forces to timely decision making. Some companies take all discretion on certain types of decisions away from anyone who isn’t a vice president. I have seen firms where only owners or partners can speak with a client. I have seen 100-person AEC firms with structures that would rival that of General Motors. There are too many layers of approvals to go through. ![]() Some firms have organization structures that make timely decision making very difficult. Not doing these things in your firm? Expect to be late in your decision making. Billing should be forecasted and re-forecasted continuously, and take no more than 48 to 72 hours to get out. Financials should be done within a week of the period ending. If no forecasting is done or the forecasting is so general or done so sporadically or on such a long schedule, the firm may not be aware of a problem until it is unable to meet its commitments. This is even more critical when it comes to cash flow. Even simple things like revenue for the month aren’t known until billing is complete and that can take weeks after the period is over. April’s statement may not be done until July. So many firms can’t even produce a timely financial statement for any number of reasons. If the information used as gauges for the performance of the business is old, how can you expect to make timely decisions? Yet this is so common. Yet, my experience after nearly 40 years in the AEC business is that there are a lot of things working against timely decision making. Especially today, when we all work in competitive fields in a rapidly changing business environment. Whenever you run a business – regardless of what kind it is – being able to make decisions and act on them in a timely manner is crucial to your survival and success. 84 (he finds “wrongous” as well as “righteous” in his big dictionary, too).“Are you making decisions as quickly as you should, or is this a problem that you keep facing over and over again? Just like all problems in this business, there’s always something you can do!” Alan Peterson, “Is Timeous a Wrongeous Usage? Words,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 8, 1989, p. I would write "he did it in a timely way" instead of "he did it timely" or maybe I'd use "timeously" if I was a braver American.ġ. Therefore I, if my opinion mattered, would insist “timely” ought to parallel “friendly,” “kingly” and “lovely” as being solely an adjective. “Time” is not an adjective, and “timely” is already the adjective. ![]() Most adverbs are structured as (adj.) + -ly (“happily,” “sheepishly”). I don’t like the use of "timely" as an adverb (“ Macduff was from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripp’d”). Give "timeously" a try-did you really think you had all the adverbs you needed? The base adjective “timeous” is used too, but more seldom. Note that use of "timeously" is mostly isolated to those nations (an Australian commentator is surprised to see it used 1). My clumsy Lexis search uncovers hundreds of news references from southern Africa (and plenty from Scotland too). For example: “Land issues in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe are said to have a lot of similarities, which need to be addressed timeously,” wrote Irene Hoaës in the New Era newspaper out of Windhoek, Namibia (July 15, 2010). It shows up in other places in southern Africa too. Timely is pretty common, but how about that word, “timeously” (pronounced /TIME-ussly/)? It’s a Scottish usage and it’s indicated as South African in dictionaries, too. Each is used both as an adjective and an adverb. “Timely” and "timeously" are synonymous, and mean "occurring at the proper time or within an expected time" (“fulfill the contract in a timely fashion”).
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