Moving fast starts before the need arrives
I've led teams inside a large global corporate, run commercial and operations teams at fast-growing scale-ups, and sat on the boards of other growing businesses. One of the mistakes I've made along the way is waiting too long to bring in the expertise we needed. We'd spot a gap, talk about it, then wait a bit longer. There was always a reason.
When we finally did, the difference was so obvious that my first thought was always: why didn't we do that six months ago?
For me, the lesson was to make the decision sooner. In a large organisation, that may only be the beginning. You can know exactly what you need and still spend months working out how to bring it in.
It's a wider problem. In Deloitte's 2026 Global Human Capital Trends report, 88% of business leaders say organising people, skills and resources more quickly is very or extremely important. Only 7% say they're making great progress.
What's slowing organisations down
When I talk to procurement leaders, I hear the same pattern. Too often, a live requirement becomes the starting point for decisions that could have been made earlier. Who owns it: HR, operations or procurement? Which supplier route fits? What approvals apply?
Those questions land on teams that are already stretched, just when the business needs an answer quickly. The Hackett Group's 2026 Procurement Key Issues study projects procurement workloads will rise 8% this year, while headcount and operating budgets both fall. That's how pressure turns into delay.
What the fastest businesses do differently
I see this from both sides: as a leader who's had to move fast, and as a supplier working with large organisations trying to do the same. From my experience, the businesses that move fastest have done three things.
1. They know what their teams can actually take on
Skills and availability are different things. The fastest businesses know which upcoming priorities need which skills, what existing teams can absorb, what can be reprioritised and how much capacity that frees up. Having the right skills in-house doesn't mean those people are free to take on the next project.
2. They know which route fits the work
Hiring, specialists and project teams serve different requirements and timescales. A permanent hire may be the right long-term answer, while a specialist or project team gets the work moving now. The fastest businesses understand those differences. When they bring in outside expertise, they use the right supplier for the right type of work.
3. They agree how decisions will be made
Staying agile doesn't mean dropping the controls. My experience in Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) has shown me why they matter. What it does mean is settling ownership, sourcing routes, contracts and compliance before urgency takes over.
You don't need an enterprise-wide model agreed before you begin. As I wrote in my last piece, a contained first project can establish the route: bring the right functions together, agree the checks and capture what can be reused. The next requirement should then benefit from those decisions.
One of our pharmaceutical clients had already set up an internal programme, run by Corporate Procurement, for bringing in external specialists. When their product team needed a patient-facing app rebuilt and localised, they didn't have to start from scratch. They came to us through that route, approved the budget within it, and relaunched the app in 18 countries.
The decisions about how to bring in outside expertise had been made before the need arrived.
What to do this week
Here's a question worth asking yourself. If a critical requirement landed tomorrow, how long would it take to get the right expertise working on it? Days, weeks or months?
If your honest answer is months, you're not alone. To see what's holding you back, pick your next likely requirement and check three things:
Can our existing teams absorb it, and what would need to be reprioritised?
If we need outside expertise, is there an approved route and a clear decision owner?
How quickly could we get the right expertise working?
If any of those answers is unclear, that's where to start.
The cost of starting from scratch
I still ask myself why we waited six months to bring in expertise whose impact was so obvious. In a large organisation, the equivalent question is: how much of this delay could we have removed before the requirement arrived?
Much of it comes down to having a clear, agreed framework for when work stays in-house and when it goes to external partners. Without one, every new requirement reopens the same debate. With one, everyone knows which approach makes sense, and the conversation can move straight to getting the right people working on it.
You won’t know every requirement in advance. But the next urgent project shouldn’t send you back to the beginning.