Why is it quick wins so often lead to slow death?

The push for quick wins often comes at the cost of longer-term success, so why do we keep thoughtlessly pursuing them

Why is it quick wins so often lead to slow death?

In the enterprise modernization space, leadership often want to see progress, to be able to show their decisions make sense.

So teams take architectural shortcuts to get something out the door, ignoring foundational work that takes more time now but saves time later.

Result, the quick win delivers a short term ROI, but kills the long-term success as the initiative is hobbled by systems that can’t scale.

At FedEx, we skipped designing translatability into the system to save time. What would’ve taken 8 people 8 weeks, took dozens of people over a year later on because they had to rip and replace all of the hardcoded text.

Quick wins done right, can be great, but they need to be designed in a way that improve long-term outcomes, eg create learnings that can be incorporated into development.

So are you guilty of pushing for quick wins without factoring in long-term costs, or seen this play out in your org?

It’s one of the risks I’ve added to the Watermelon Preventer, as it’s one of the big silent killers of so many modernization initiatives.

The Watermelon Preventer is a risk identification tool I developed to help teams and organizations identify and avoid common problems early on, as opposed to later.

It’s the tool I wished I had have had when I started leading my first modernization.