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SPEED – Waiting for Joe III

It’s a fact that our decisions have become faster and faster in the last few years. Emails, social media, technologies, opportunities to be seized, unexpected risks to be avoided with sudden twists. All of this conspires against us, all of this forces us to speed things up. Frank Partnoy, professor of Finance and Law at the University of San Diego, has gathered thoughts and interesting examples on this topic in a book with a bizarre title: “Wait: the Art and Science of Delay”.

In the researches mentioned by Partnoy, the ones carried out by University of Toronto say that, after being exposed to a flashing fast-food logo, people read 20% faster, become more impatient and find it difficult to enjoy pictures. Hence this kind of stimulus is sufficient to make us faster (speedy).

So, the point is, admitting that “it’s better if it’s faster” does not imply that “super-fast will be better”. On the contrary, Partnoy states that a certain level of slowdown (delay) is optimal, necessary, even while operating in a super-fast environment.

And super-fast way is not the approach of Innovation: stories about epiphanic discoveries have been overwhelmingly dismissed. Real innovators have been working hardly and for a long time on their innovations, which have not been discovered overnight.

And this is the reason why Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman pay close attention to Innovation and look for distinctive aspects of leadership that comply with speed and quality.

Innovation is a trait of leaders who always look for faster and more efficient ways and who, in parallel, keep a close eye on the quality of the output and maintain a clear strategical perspective: they look ahead, at the long-term horizon and understand enlarged scenarios. They are effective in defining such perspective and insights and in sharing them with others, so that eveyone can trasform them in challeging goals full of sense and meaning, condition that appears to be essential for the realization of the goals.

At this point, you just have to come and listen to the rest of the story of SPEED directly from Joe Folkman. STAY TUNED!
Barbara Demichelis