Rachael Happe, groundbreaking co-founder of The Community Roundtable, has just written an incredibly important post entitled, Communities – The New Strategic Imperative. I urge you to read and consider it.
Some managers and executives I know have expressed what I’ll characterize as desperation at the speed at which things are running, and the fact that an end to the acceleration is nowhere in sight. A few are trying to understand this problem and devise solutions. Others seem to hover near the point of exhaustion. Meanwhile, brain research studies on multi-tasking’s lack of efficacy have begun appearing. None of this bodes well for high quality decision-making.
The leadership development experts have begun socializing the “new” competencies that governing in an increasingly complex 21st century will require – but is the task just skills acquisition, or are people in the most technologically advanced cultures approaching some sort of inner limit? Happe’s post puts a much needed and very credible context around this issue of “not enough time.” I think her vision is attractive because it focuses on quality, is sustainable, and in the long run will deliver more value. What do you think?
Thanks for sharing this article, Kitty. Just read it and have a couple thoughts:
1 – There is no doubt that the present environment is stressful – moving faster and faster with just enough information to make decisions. And I do think quality is lost when we move too fast. What we do is state that unfinished versions of products and services are in “beta” – not totally ready yet, but testing the market response….which, in some ways, is a way of building trust and gaining customer feedback…but it also might be a way to justify quick creation without higher standards of quality…mostly to beat competitors to market.
2 – In terms of the personal toll, the only way that I keep from getting completely overwhelmed is the fact that I work from home. I don’t have the stress of a commute, so that preserves a bit of my nerves and brain cells to absorb a bit more stress when I am performing my core tasks from 8a – 6p. So I marvel at people who have to get up and drive hours to do all of this every day…and hope that one of the societal shifts that happen when we say “Stop! Enough!” is that more people have the chance to work from alternative locations…for starters.
Happe hits the target–but it’s nothing new. For some reason, we generally forget relationships and their necessity for getting to success–success in so many forms, so many contexts, including the social media revolution. Is it a revolution? What’s changed fundamentally? Face-to-face conversations over time builds everything we need and want–including change.
I recently came across a new effort trying to disconnect from technology, not completely but enough so we can start thinking again. There has been a conference already and several others scheduled – http://www.wisdom2summit.com/. Is anyone familiar or attended a Wisdom 2.0 conference? We don’t have to keep getting faster, we just have to get better at managing the speed and keep time for really thinking. Business at the speed of thought is fine; we have to live at the speed of humans.
Interesting, Paul; I hadn’t hear of these conferences, but I think Chris Sacca has it right (‘ yet we are beginning to realize that no matter how great a technological device we buy or how great our network is, the real source of potential is in ourselves.‘). Thanks.