In program and project management, people talk about “straightening out the program,” meaning to set it on an orderly basis, with dependencies between one task and another, and resource availability in the face of constraints, properly recognised.
Without that clarity…
The program has “kinks” in it and so seems shorter overall than it really is, and at the same time actually isn’t the quickest route between two points.
It’s not laid out in a line properly.
Proper development of a programme then, both increases the realism of the planning and finds ways to minimise the expected duration.
So the end result is a straight line of minimum possible length.
Developing a business or an organisation is like that too.
In that context, the question is: Are the actions we’re taking on the shortest path to the goal or the vision?
Or are they partly a side road?
In other words, are we truly doing what most needs to be done?