There’s a strange comfort in long timelines.
Plenty of runway.
Plenty of room to manoeuvre.
Plenty of time to “figure it out”.
On the surface, it feels sensible.
Responsible, even.
In practice, long timelines hide things you actually need to see.
They hide indecision.
They hide weak priorities.
They hide work that isn’t moving.
When a deadline is far away, everything feels possible.
When it’s close, reality shows up.
Short cycles force honesty.
They don’t let you pretend something is progressing just because people are busy.
They don’t allow vague updates to pass as momentum.
At the end of a sprint, there’s a simple question:
Do we have something, or don’t we?
That question is uncomfortable.
Which is exactly why it works.
I’ve seen this play out again and again in teams.
With long timelines, conversations sound like this:
“We’re making good progress.”
“It’s moving in the right direction.”
“We’ll have more clarity soon.”
With short cycles, the language changes:
“This worked.”
“This didn’t.”
“We need to change this.”
No spin.
No padding.
Just truth.
And here’s the thing most people miss.
That honesty isn’t demoralising.
It’s energising.
When reality is clear, people stop guessing.
They stop overthinking.
They stop hedging.
They start deciding.
Short sprints don’t just reveal problems.
They reveal priorities.
If everything can’t be done in two weeks, something has to give.
And that forces the question most teams avoid:
What actually matters now?
Not in theory.
Not eventually.
Not when things calm down.
Now.
This is where bad decisions surface quickly.
And good ones get reinforced.
Long timelines allow weak choices to linger.
Short timelines either validate them or kill them.
Both outcomes are useful.
I’ve worked with teams who were nervous about short cycles.
They worried it would expose gaps.
Or make things feel too pressured.
What actually happened was the opposite.
Once the truth was visible, stress went down.
People stopped carrying unspoken doubts.
Progress became tangible.
Nothing builds confidence like seeing work land.
And nothing erodes it faster than months of effort with nothing concrete to show.
If your work feels foggy right now, it’s worth asking:
Are our timelines giving us clarity…
or cover?
Are we learning quickly…
or deferring decisions?
Because momentum doesn’t come from optimism.
It comes from feedback.
Short cycles create that feedback loop.
Fast.
Relentlessly.
Productively.
Next week, I’ll talk about why collaboration beats handovers, and why most delays aren’t caused by effort but by misalignment.
But for this week, sit with this.
If you want honesty, shorten the window.
