28th July 2025
Time-Blind Culture
The Hidden Threat to Business Performance
In most organisations, time is the most overdrawn account.
We talk about budgets, headcount, and KPIs, but rarely about time as a finite, strategic resource. And yet, for roles like HR and Finance Business Partners, time is the currency of impact. When it’s spent well, they shape decisions, challenge thinking, and drive value. When it’s squandered? They become glorified inboxes.
But here’s the catch: Business Partners aren’t just victims of time-blindness, they can also be contributors.
Welcome to the Time-Blind Culture, where the asks are infinite, the priorities are unclear, and the cost is quietly compounding across the entire organisation.
The Rise of the Infinite Ask
In many organisations, there’s an unspoken assumption: if something needs doing, someone will do it. And often, that someone is the Business Partner.
- Need a workforce plan by Friday? Ask HR.
- Need a new margin model? Ask Finance.
- Need it yesterday? Of course.
This isn’t collaboration, it’s delegation by stealth. And it’s not sustainable.
McKinsey’s research on organisational health highlights the importance of role clarity and disciplined prioritisation. But in a time-blind culture, everything feels urgent, and everyone feels entitled to support, regardless of strategic value.
Being a Business Partner doesn’t mean doing it all
Let’s be clear: the Business Partner role was never designed to be a catch-all. It’s meant to be a strategic enabler, someone who brings insight, challenges assumptions, and helps leaders make better decisions.
But when their time is treated as elastic, they’re pulled into the weeds. The strategic becomes tactical. The proactive becomes reactive. And the role becomes diluted.
BCG’s work on functional excellence reinforces this: the best-performing organisations don’t just have strong central team, they build capability across the business. That means Sales, Ops, and Marketing leaders need to lift their own analytical and planning muscles, not outsource them to HR or Finance.
Time-Blindness Cuts Both Ways
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Business Partners can also be time-blind.
When they push out surveys, request data, or schedule workshops without considering the operational rhythm of frontline teams, they risk becoming part of the problem.
Take Sales, for example. An Account Executive’s time with customers is the lifeblood of revenue. Every internal request that pulls them away from that is a cost to the business, and, if the value isn’t clear, a burden to the individual.
In a truly time-literate culture, everyone recognises that time is not just their own to manage, it’s a shared, strategic asset.
What Needs to Shift?
To break the cycle of time-blindness, leaders need to make three deliberate moves:
- Name the culture: Call out the “infinite ask” mindset. Make time a visible, finite resource, just like budget.
- Redefine the role: Position Business Partners as challengers and coaches, not doers. Their value lies in influence, not execution.
- Build integrative capability: Equip frontline leaders to own more of the work—and equip Business Partners to engage with empathy, understanding the time pressures others face.
Time isn’t just a calendar issue, it’s a culture issue. And when we ignore its limits, we burn out our best people and blunt our strategic edge.
So next time you’re about to ask your Business Partner for “just one more thing,” or send a request to Sales for “just a quick input,” pause.
Ask yourself: is this the best use of their time, or just the easiest use of yours?
Because in a time-blind culture, everyone pays. Eventually.
Justin Miles
Categories: Designing Organisations
