Speed is killing our decisions. The crush of technology forces us to snap react. We blink, when we should think. E-mail, social media, and 24-hour news are relentless. Our time cycle gets faster every day.
Yet as our decision-making accelerates, long-term strategy becomes even more crucial. Those of us who find time to step back and think about the big picture, even for a few minutes, have a major advantage. If every one else moves too quickly, we can win by going slow.
In general, we make better decisions when we minimize the time it takes to decide and act — so that we can spend more time observing and orienting.
Consider professional athletes. Because a pro baseball or tennis player has only half a second to hit the ball, it might seem like the key to success would be going faster. But high-speed studies show that professionals are better than the rest of us because they start their swings later. They wait a few extra milliseconds, so they can take in more information about the speed and trajectory of the ball, then orient themselves in order to make an ideal swing.
The same applies in business. The faster we can execute a decision, the more time we free up to understand the task, gather information, and analyze the issues. If we require too much time to decide or act, we are forced to finish observing and orienting earlier. And if we act too quickly, we might respond to a problem that changes or even goes away before the deadline.
