The Joy of Slow

We live in an age that worships speed – of communication, decision-making, and 100 metre-running. Yet there is a case to be made that speed isn’t always good for companies. A recent, rather arcane study by John Hopkins University assistant professor Brian Gunia (http://briangunia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Gunia-et-al-2012.pdf ) found that managers who made decisions slowly were more likely to make ethical decisions. Many of the dodgy calls that helped precipitate the global economic crisis were made at ridiculous speed.

And in a new book Wait: The Art Of Science And Delay, Frank Partnoy (http://frankpartnoy.com) suggests that in creative industries, the constant pressure to make decisions quickly actually prevents the kind of insight that really transforms performance. A fan once asked Ernest Hemingway how he wrote a novel. “The first thing to do,” said the author of A Farewell To Arms, “is to clean the fridge”.