Figure 3.3: Productivity change in the non-farm business sector (1947–2016) — Figure 3.3 Productivity change in the non-farm business sector (1947–2016)

Companies, though, have continued to invest in new technologies, under the sometimes misguided assumption that productivity would improve automatically. The new systems, however, may not be better or more productive, they may just be different. The technology has become so swamped by other communication technologies that it’s starting to have the opposite effect. The net result is that leadership is now dealing with one of the most distracted audiences ever in the history of leadership. Our very capacity to concentrate has become eroded by the constantly declining attention spans. Worse, leaders are competing for attention with the best directors of video and graphic designers, all of whom have the capacity to make the material more stimulating.

Now management communications take longer because we first need to get attention, then maintain it, then check that everyone has the information. On top of this, leadership now has compliance checks to periodically check that the amnesia caused by overload has not expunged the previous information.

Leadership must up its game as far as communications are concerned. It cannot rely on spreadsheet and PowerPoint decks; it must go further to include greater brevity, entertainment, humour, graphics and so on.

QUICK TIP Leaders should never confuse communication with conversation. They should take every opportunity to talk to as wide a group of stakeholders as possible. They should use every opportunity to back up what they say with compelling online graphics and videos.

So, Metcalfe’s Law clearly has a dark side: as the cost of communications decreases, the number of interactions increases exponentially, as does the time required to process them. The principle applies to meetings as well. As the cost of video conferencing technology such as Zoom decreased, the number of meetings increased. As a consequence, the number of meetings has increased and the number of attendees per meeting has exploded. Now some 15 per cent of an organization’s collective time is spent in meetings – a percentage that has increased every year since 2008, according to the Harvard Business Review.¹⁵

When the cost of communication was much greater, more time was invested in careful and thoughtful communication. The quantity of communications has increased but the quality has fallen. The low cost and abundant communication have now passed tipping point and, as we learnt in Chapter 1, have given us overload. Worse still, all the technology has one thing in common. It’s faster than what it replaced. Well, of course, this is one of the great positive effects of the internet. You can have everything faster than ever before. There’s no need to wait. There’s no need for delayed gratification. This creates an expectation not just for applications, but for everything else.

For example, why do we need shops and shop assistants? If the shop is on my laptop and can deliver this afternoon, why do I need shops? This is having a profound impact on urban centres. When Tinder allows you to swipe right for an alternative partner, it creates an expectation that relationships are that easy to dissolve and easy to replace. There are plenty of alternatives. Why should I put up with this partner when I can have another one? This is having a profound effect on the longevity of relationships domestically and in the workplace. When Facebook allows you to like something, it hears your view and creates an expectation that maybe all of life should be like that, too. For instance, why can’t someone who’s so obviously guilty just be convicted right away? Why do we need to give politicians a mandate? Why can’t we take all the votes ourselves? Why can’t we have direct democracy?

Impatience is changing behaviours and expectations in many areas. Now let’s look across to the economic consequences of this level of impatience.

The consistent rise in disposable incomes

In Chapter 1 we saw that the abundance of facts provided by the internet is not necessarily correlated with their uptake. Fantasy is always much more entertaining than fact – hence the arrival of fake news. In much the same way, the greatest period of material wealth improvement ever has coincided with a greater debate on income inequality. This is because it doesn’t matter what the average or overall numbers say, there are winners and losers. These groups can also shake out into sub-groups by age, gender, ethnicity, residential area, education and so on.

Consistently rising disposable incomes for the rich have also contributed to the impatience and vice versa both in the UK¹⁶ and the United States.¹⁷ Impatience, overconsumption and debt are thus reflexive relationships.

The speed at which internet commerce operates online means that purchases can be made without consent or hidden, for example Amazon Quick Buy, in-game purchases, roaming data rates, online gambling with fixed odds betting terminals (FOBT), Apple Pay and so on. Sometimes, variable pricing according to demand can increase costs without formal consent. Under these circumstances, we’re not choosing what we want to buy at the price we want to buy it. We’re being given the illusion of choice and price. We’re asked which item we’d like to consume, rather than having the option of not to consume at all. All of this is fed by targeted (and re-targeted) programmatic advertising designed to constantly remind us of missed purchases and reinforce awareness of the novel and the abundance.

Patience is not one virtue, but three

One definition of patience is ‘waiting without complaint’;¹⁸ to be patient is to endure discomfort in silence. This enfolds three other virtues such as self-control, humility and generosity. Therefore, patience is not necessarily a single virtue, but an amalgam of others, and the lack of it has profound social consequences.

Patience is required in just about every walk of life. Patience is also inherently tied to justice. It takes time for a court to listen to witnesses, consider the facts and ask questions. It takes time to assemble a jury. Media justice is all the swifter but, unfortunately, all the more frequently found to be lacking. For a just decision to be reached, all witnesses need to be consulted, all statements read. The lawyers and solicitors must work together to agree the correct charge. If any conviction is made, then it must be subject to a right of appeal, sometimes at several levels.

Democracy depends on patience. Candidates must campaign. Policies must be drawn up and costed. The electorate needs to hear both sides of the argument. Then, after the election, the representatives must work patiently to draft legislation. Changing statute law is an especially painstaking process. Laws must pass through several consultation stages so that all those who are to be governed by them agree.

Construction requires patient planning of all environmental considerations. It needs to be authorized by all relevant safety representatives. Each trade must be carefully coordinated to ensure they work in sequence. Sometimes engineering projects, in particular, encounter unforeseen difficulties requiring a change of plan.

Teaching requires an understanding that not everyone learns at the same pace or in the same way. There are many different ways of learning and it doesn’t stop after school or college. Nursing recognizes that healing is not a straight-line process. There are good days and bad. To employ someone, an employer must have patience to allow a job to be learnt and for mistakes to be made. This is patience as tolerance. There are of course many types of patience. Some leadership tasks can be boring but many of the most important are repetitive and require persistence. This is patience as determination, perhaps one of the greatest – and most underrated – of all leadership skills. Leaders are also subjected to the problems of the whole team in addition to their own. Good leaders learn to subordinate their own problems to those of the team. This is patience as self-sacrifice to put others first.

The human virtues of caring, nurturing, even parenting itself all depend on patience. The very fabric of our society is therefore being undermined by the increased speed of technology, so highly valued and so highly prized by so many. This, of course, is another paradox where what looks to be a gain is merely a short-term improvement at the expense of long-term efficiency.

Patience as a key factor in efficiency

In Too Fast to Think, we examined the difference between the illusion and the reality of speed. Moving along a zig-zag line fast may feel quick. You can get to the destination in a straight line, faster. To do this requires patient planning rather than immediate departure for the objectives. Impatience for action, in its crudest form, then represents wasted energy which might be better applied to planning a solution to a problem.

Patience is not only required for carers. It’s required for inspiring leadership as well. Demonstrations of patience can be powerful. When a leader reveals a long-term goal, every setback is a way of renewing the determination to achieve the goal. Victory without setbacks is not as inspirational.

In a similar way, when a leader waits in line with their team or even goes to the back of the queue, they demonstrate that all those who are waiting are equally as worthy to get what they wait for. This is patience as democracy. This is patience as manners and a demonstration of self-discipline which shows strong leadership. The best way for a team to identify with a leader is to see them sharing the same difficulties. This demonstrates that the leader is not just aware of their own thoughts and needs, but those of others, too.

Power and patience walk hand in hand. Rushes to judgement and short-term displays of power do not project anything other than weakness. Less is more. Therefore, patience in leadership is important, but it’s surprisingly absent in other areas. For instance, among shareholders. Depending on country, some stock markets around the world insist on immediacy and on investees reporting back to investors every 90 days. This is where patience and trust are linked.

QUICK TIP Do not confuse the illusion of speed with the actuality of it. The speed of decisions is usually inversely proportional to the actions implemented.

Impatience and stress

It comes as no surprise that impatience and stress are linked. The remedies for dealing with stress are well developed and include exercise, meditation, yoga, mindfulness and so on. Classes to develop patience, though, are not so well developed, but they might help address how impatience causes so much stress in others. It would seem, however, that the systems that create so much efficiency are also encouraging our expectations that all things should be as quick and easy. We recognize and deal with stress, but seldom address its real cause – our own impatience to cram in as much as the internet will allow, then use any time-savings resulting to cram in even more. We need to stop, create space and then see what happens.

Can patience be learnt?

It’s often said that leadership is a natural talent. You either have it or you don’t. Patience, though, is at the centre of good, long-term, unifying leadership. Can this be learnt in a business school? Most business schools concentrate on putting leaders under time pressure and then subjecting them to complex problems. This, of course, is perhaps a more realistic situation. Real-world leaders are often required to make decisions under stress, deprived of sleep and often with inadequate information, usually with conflicting priorities.

The first experience of this can be frustrating, isolating and stressful. The first place leaders have to learn patience is with their own performance. This requires perseverance. You can’t demonstrate endurance and empathy in others without first applying it to yourself. This is sometimes why failure can be an excellent spur to success. Those with the patience and determination to try again have a better chance of succeeding.

This then highlights one of the dividing lines between a leader and a manager. The latter concentrates on doing things right. The former on doing the right things. This requires courage and personal responsibility to absorb the notion of failure and re-frame it positively. A bitter or resentful approach to failure is the hallmark of incompetent leadership.

In Strength of Will and How to Develop It, author E Boyd Barrett offers the following:

Scatter 50 coins on the floor. Then quietly and slowly pick them up and place them in a pile. The author suggests doing this once per day for several days, increasing the number of coins as you go.
Take a book of at least 150 pages and turn the pages one by one quietly and slowly, making a pencil mark on each page as you go.
Beginning with the number one, count out loud slowly and distinctly for 10 minutes.

If this sounds pointless, then you’ve understood it. This is the same perseverance required for incremental physical improvements such as dieting or exercise. Mental discipline is the parent of patience.

QUICK TIP Patience is an amalgam of being disciplined, considerate, unselfish. It is long-term efficient. It fosters long-term unity and trust. Impatience atomizes teams. It is difficult to respect long-term values with impatience.

The whole point about patience and self-discipline is highlighted by the so-called ‘Marshmallow Experiments’ done by psychologist Walter Mischel in the early 1960s at Stanford University in California.¹⁹ Mischel gave children the choice between a reward (like a marshmallow, pretzel, or mint) they could eat immediately or a larger reward (two marshmallows) for which they would have to wait alone, for up to 20 minutes. This was a longitudinal study followed up years later which found that children who had waited for the second marshmallow generally fared better in life. For example, studies showed that a child’s ability to delay eating the first treat correlated with higher academic scores and a lower body mass index (BMI). Researchers showed that parents of ‘high delayers’ even reported that they were more competent than ‘instant gratifiers’, without ever knowing whether their child had gobbled the first marshmallow.

Impatience and relationships

Not all relationships go well from the start. All emotional partners can attest to that. Sometimes it takes time for people to grow together. Could it be that the increased divorce rate and the decline of patience are linked? The presence of alternatives is also a factor. Those who are impatient trigger impatience in others. This is the chain reaction, which seems to be both accepted and accelerating. According to The UK Office of National Statistics, a quarter of children are in single parent families.²⁰ Every parent of teenagers knows the ‘phases’ of adolescence can be challenging, which also takes time and forbearance. This is love as an allotrope of patience.

The effect on politics, leadership and trust

Above all, it’s impossible to develop trust where there is no patience. Therefore, it may not be the representatives who are at fault but the electors. Could it be that the root cause of the lack of trust is not so much that human nature has changed, but that expectations have been raised beyond the realistic?

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1762 work, Of the Social Contract, the idea of the sovereignty of the people and their relationship with political leadership was established. ‘Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others and still remains a greater slave than them. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.’ He goes on to discuss the relationship between the leaders (in this case government and monarchy) and the people. Rousseau’s work is relevant here because it was echoed by the social media of the time – cheaply printed pamphlets which stirred up hatred for the monarchy planted the seeds for revolution.

The impatience for change, even just the perception of change

Let’s look at impatience as the provenance of political change. Whether politicians like it or not, they are civic leaders. The first job of any leader is to protect and serve their followers and their political systems. Brexit and the rise of nationalism both in Europe and the United States are signals that large groups don’t feel leaders have done enough to protect them. This applies to their perceptions of fairness, healthcare, education, and law and order. Things haven’t changed fast enough in their eyes.

Shortly after the US election in November 2016, The Guardian²¹ asked a sample of US citizens why they voted for the President. Some said they didn’t want the Clinton legacy continued in the White House, citing Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Others admired the presidential candidate as a self-made man. Some wanted to change the United States to serve the people instead of a political system that wants to serve itself. ‘He tells it how it is’ was another reason.

The United States, and the world, was strongly split between those who think the new President is a disaster and those who think he is an unmitigated success. Part of the picture here is that there are now two impatient Americas, both of which want change, but both of which have differing models. One is made up of coastal cities and known to the rest of the world, including New York, Boston, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Some refer to this as the ‘Clinton Archipelago’. The other is the wider interior which is less well known to the world, including Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Alaska, Alabama, Nebraska and North Dakota. This ‘Core America’ vote won the presidential race, the Senate, the House and most of the Governorships and they intend to turn the country in their direction.

How many leaders think they know the United States just because they spend time in New York City? Travelling is not necessarily understanding. It is too easy to make judgements about a brief experience. Assumptions need challenging in the new world.

Impatience is the source of division

The new President will in no way soften his stance and many in core America love this. Therefore, even as the headlines read one thing, his approval ratings with his supporters remain steady. Therefore, it’s no use any more talking about the President’s popularity or unpopularity. The United States is divided by its impatience with the other tribe. Many people would now have a problem with their offspring marrying outside of their political party.²²

It’s easy to become caught up in the media chorus of opprobrium of President Trump. No doubt, some find his manner alone to be offensive. It may be, though, that there is more of a global anti-establishment movement than is realized. It’s easier to pin it all on one man who is easy to dislike than to accept that this wave of populism (or popular impatience) is wider and more global. Part of the campaign message was about voter impatience with Washington. This was manifest specifically as a pledge to return government to the state, rather than Federal, level. His repeated assertions that he wanted to ‘drain the swamp’ indicated to some that he wanted a smaller government overall.

In a similar way, the wave of sexual harassment allegations that rocked entertainment in Hollywood and politics in Westminster in 2017 also shows the growing impatience with the judicial system. Many allegations against individuals were made and repeated by media. This resulted in cases of significant reputational damage being done to individuals, despite no convictions being secured.

Conclusions

The very thing we most like about doughnuts is how good they make us feel instantly, right now, in the short term. Maybe that’s why the United States is consuming record amounts of them?²³ This is also true of the internet. It feels great to have instant gratification for every whim. Ultimately, both are bad for us because they create an expectation that these short-term pleasures have no long-term consequences.

The immediacy of online environments raises expectations of performance in offline environments such as politics, electoral systems and the judiciary. The ever-increasing levels of impatience are impacting every aspect of human relationships. Consumerism and consumption are driven up as job tenure and average relationship lengths are driven down. Although household incomes are rising, so are the levels of debt as people struggle to keep up by changing jobs. This is causing greater stress and instability which itself impacts upon relationships. This atomizes and multiplies the number of households. This increases more consumption and drives yet more debt and inequality. In sum total, we pay a high price for the immediacy and short-term efficiency we get from technology. In the long term, it creates great inefficiency, inequality, unhappiness and waste. This further erodes trust in both national and international leadership. This, combined with other factors, is resulting in an erosion of traditional politics which is leading to a radically changed world.

The conclusion is that there is a causal link between impatience engendered by the internet and the risk of a breakdown in relationships on a personal, domestic, corporate and political level. The new technologies, if they are applied like their predecessors, will only exacerbate these trends.

Impatience is a hidden killer of potential and is probably the reason that many will never read these words.