I just keynoted a retreat for a company focused on the goal of responding
to any client within fifteen seconds. Inside the company they joke that
their work day is like running to catch a speeding train that’s already
gone when you catch it. Everyone works long hours and their growing profits
testify to their success. The business of the company is data – how to
get it and link it so its value is maximized for clients.
Last week I spoke for a much larger organization with a much more
conservative culture. Inside the company they joke about their deliberate
pace. The continued growth and profitability of the company in a difficult
industry testifies to their success. The business of this company too is data
- how to mine it to maximize its value for clients.
On a tropical reef, there is an extraordinary diversity of life. Every
niche is occupied. You see everything from long-nosed fish that feed under
rock shelves to flounders that disappear in the sand.
Although we hear endlessly of the rapid pace of life today, there are in
fact a great diversity of temporal niches that we inhabit much as those
reef fish inhabit spatial ones.
We can live at any speed we choose, so long as we’re comfortable with the
risks and rewards of that particular niche. It’s the communication between
people living at different speeds that gets difficult. It’s as if we’re
spinning on a turntable like old phonograph records playing at different speeds.
The people at both companies do have one thing in common, though. The
conversation that percolates throughout the culture, with the leadership as
its source, is characterized by respect for everyone who works there.
When we know we’re respected, we contribute gladly and willingly — at the highest speed we’ve got.
