The Human Cost of a Multi-Clock Institution

Joel Larson, PhD
Jan 21
3 min read

Why “Just Decide” Is Rarely the Right Answer in Higher Education IT

Last week, I wrote about why time works differently in higher education IT — why decisions aren’t governed by a single calendar, and why speed is rarely the primary constraint.

This is the second part of that conversation.

Because once you understand that higher education runs on multiple clocks, the next question becomes harder:

What does that do to the people making the decisions?

When Time Stops Being Technical

From the outside, delays often look like hesitation.

From the inside, they feel very different.

In a multi-clock institution, every decision carries more than one timeline at once:

academic schedules that cannot pause
budget cycles that reset annually
governance processes that move deliberately
operational realities that demand uptime
institutional memory that remembers failure longer than success

When those clocks collide, the work stops being technical and starts being human.

Because someone has to decide which clock matters most this time.

The Weight of “Just Decide”

“Just make a decision” is often offered as encouragement.

In higher education IT, it can feel more like pressure.

Not because leaders don’t understand the problem —but because they understand it too well.

They know that:

a rushed decision might succeed technically but fail politically
a failed rollout may not get another attempt this fiscal year
a mistake doesn’t disappear when the change window closes
trust, once lost, resets on a much slower clock

So the hesitation people see isn’t uncertainty.

It’s accountability playing out across multiple futures.

Decision Fatigue Is a Systemic Issue

Over time, this creates a very real cost: decision fatigue.

Not the kind that comes from too many emails or meetings —but the kind that comes from repeatedly weighing:

speed vs stability
innovation vs equity
urgency vs recoverability
local needs vs institutional consequences

Each choice leaves a mark.

And unlike environments with rapid iteration cycles, higher education often remembers its failures longer than its successes. A single bad experience can echo for semesters — or years.

That memory shapes behavior.

It teaches caution.

It teaches patience.

It teaches people to ask not “Can we?” but “What happens if this goes wrong?”

Why This Is Often Misread

From the outside, this can look like resistance to change.

From the inside, it’s closer to stewardship.

Most leaders in higher education IT aren’t trying to avoid responsibility — they’re trying to carry it forward without breaking something they can’t easily repair.

That responsibility doesn’t live on one clock.

It lives in the tension between all of them.

The Quiet Cost We Rarely Name

Here’s the part we don’t talk about enough:

People working inside multi-clock systems absorb the friction personally.

They carry the anxiety of missed windows. They hold the memory of past failures. They feel the pressure to move faster and safer at the same time.

That tension doesn’t show up in project plans.

But it shows up in burnout. In over-documentation. In pilots that last longer than expected. In leaders who hesitate not because they don’t care — but because they care deeply.

Why This Matters

If we don’t acknowledge the human cost of how time works here, we misdiagnose the problem.

We mistake care for caution. We mistake deliberation for delay. We mistake responsibility for inertia.

And when that happens, the conversation shifts from how do we support better decisions to why won’t you just decide.

That’s the wrong question.

Looking Ahead

In the next part of this series, I want to explore what happens when governance time and operational time collide — and why IT often ends up in the middle, trying to translate between clocks that were never designed to sync.

Because higher education doesn’t move slowly by accident.

It moves carefully on purpose.

And understanding that starts with recognizing the people living inside the time.