Many of us have experienced the importance of efficiency and speed in the workplace. We can blame technology for most (or all) of it. Email replaced phone calls and fax machines. It literally changed the expectation of communications to working around the clock. versus time zone specific.
Here’s an argument for how speed is destroying a culture of human to human connections, and thereby workplace efficiency.
When we are empowered to communicate with keyboards (or finger pads), we become fairly myopic. Our world starts to zoom right in to a few close feet in front of a screen. The idea of a real human-being on the receiving end is not immediate. We are constantly reminding ourselves to self-edit before typing another sentence or hitting send.
Along the way, we are sucked into a world of immediacy and suddenly success is driven by time-critical deadlines that keep us focused on our micro-worlds.
This is happening in Fortune100 or 500 companies that we would call ‘successful’, and these inefficiencies are cloaked within an “entrepreneurial” spirit of innovation. No one is the wiser for doing their job in a less efficient way because “we’ve always done it that way”. Or it’s safe to go with the flow, not rattle the bushes.
I used to argue to my boss, who was chair of our board when I was CEO, that I couldn’t do both – stay in the weeds getting stuff done AND thinking like a big visionary about the endless possibilities. When he asked why, I explained that every idea starts to look like a burden because I had to figure out how to get it done. Our team was too small and our plates were very full.
Well, that’s what speed of technology is doing to all of us. Unless folks are trained to look at the 30,000 foot level, which requires them to slow down and rely on people, it could be costly to invest in speed over macro-level efficiency.
One final thought. People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Will companies lose good employees if they are not given the opportunity to contribute to the big picture beyond a myopic silo?
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