Key takeaways
- It's not the delay that's the problem, it's information shared too late.
- Salami tactics with updates burn more trust than the original error.
- Impact comes from process transparency, not from managing hopes.
I have no problem with delays, honestly. What bothers me is something else: a system that already has the information but releases it in slices and too late. The delay is just the symptom, the lack of transparency is the problem.
Salami tactics burn trust
The classic pattern: every ten minutes a new "just 20 more minutes," then the display disappears entirely, then another half hour after all. Meanwhile the honest info would have been available.
These salami tactics cost more than the delay itself: they leave people in the dark, force pointless back-and-forth and burn a piece of trust with every half-baked update.
The same applies in projects
In projects too it's rarely the error that annoys. What annoys is when nobody says what's going on. An honest heads-up ("this is stuck here, we'll know more in two days") carries further than any polished update.
Impact comes from process transparency, not from managing hopes. That's why we work with our cards on the table: better an uncomfortable truth early than a comfortable surprise late.
