Would this add more value or add more confusion?

The phrase “too little too late” means that somebody didn’t act soon enough to make a difference.

They could have prevented a problem, but they took action only after the it had become bad.

This term originated in the early nineteen hundreds in the military, referring to wartime reinforcements that were insufficient and came too late to save the troops. Today the idiom has broader applications in everything from relationships to economics to farming to athletics.

One interesting variation on the phrase relates to workplace communication. Except instead of being too little too late, it’s “too much too late.”

Ever worked with someone who did that? A team member who always seemed to show up at the eleventh hour with their big opinions that derailed the momentum of the project?

One of my old coworkers was like that. Andrea was smart, experienced, well connected and excelled at her job as a salesperson. Customers absolutely loved her.

But internally, she was a royal pain in the ass. Particularly when she gave us input on team projects. It became a burden to work with her because all of her feedback felt like she was assigning us homework. She’d come barging in with a whole bunch of unexpected edits on collateral, website design, marketing content, and so on.

And if we were to implement even some of them, it would have resulted in a major turnaround in the workflow. It would literally cost us days of additional work.

My founder even took her aside one afternoon and told her:

We want everyone on the team to be heard and feel safe to share their opinions. But in the creative process, timing if everything. When there’s one person who always shakes things up late in the game, it not only slows down the work, but makes the rest of us hesitant to involve that person at all.

It’s the classic case of too much, too late. And it’s causing an abundance of stress, money, time and excess labor. When feedback comes in after a project is more than fifty percent done, even a minor request for a change can set the team back two weeks.

With already packed schedules, people don’t need that kind of additional stress.

The solution to this problem is double sided.

First is the person delivering the feedback. They need empathy and context. Before swooping in with their big change orders, they should ask themselves a few questions.

*Would this feedback be helpful at this stage of the project?
*And if so, would the team even be able to act on that feedback, no matter how reasonable it was?

Because maybe there’s already too many cooks in the kitchen. Maybe hearing one more voice would add more confusion than value.

Then again, maybe it would bring a fresh perspective that makes the work exponentially better.

Also, in the event that someone does have the chance to share late stage feedback, the person might preface their input with humility:

Hey y’all, I know it’s late in the project, and those who have spent more time on it than me have greater context. Feel free to take this or leave it.

This framing will help make surprise feedback easier to hear and respond to.

The second solution to feedback flustering comes from the management side. If they know that the window of opportunity for input and changes is closing, then they have to set a boundary.

One tool is to add an input embargo to the project calendar, reminding everyone when the point of no return is, aka, when there will be no further changes.

This not only draws a public line in the sand, but gives the production team peace of mind knowing that there won’t be any stressful eleventh hour input.

Listen, feedback is complicated for everyone.

Sometimes it’s too little too late. Some of the time, it’s too much too late. Some of the time, it’s flat out stupid and wrong.

But the one thing that should happen all of the time is, shipping great work out the door.

Our commitment must be to execution, not perfection.

Will your team even be able to act on this feedback, no matter how reasonable it is?