It's About Time
By Peter Block
I
was in Silicon Valley last year and someone from Bay Networks, a
software company, asked me
what I thought of
the motto, "Speed is god
and time is the
devil." Too busy to respond at the moment, I later thought that this
statement was a
clear, precise statement of the culture we are in
 the
process of
creating. Our
religious affection for
technology and its
commerce keeps
deepening and the internet has become the ultimate modern wonder drug.
The internet is not about communication and global understanding, it is
about reducing transaction time. Reduced transaction time has become a
form of new age materialism.
--It
is hard to argue against the internet. It is really a huge, benign,
low-cost encyclopedia that operates like a mall and helps replace the
telephone company and the postal service. It has surfaced needs that I
did not know I had. Until recently, I was happy paying bills through the
mail, getting tickets from a travel agent, buying books at a book store,
and calling people I wanted to talk to. No more. Now I need to do all of
these electronically.
--Information
and its technology is useful for the conduct of business, but it is also
doing something to our minds. It is creating illusions about speed and
change that may be more malignant than we realize.
Ways our mind is
being bent:
We think because things can be automated, they are improved.
--Just
because we can reduce transaction time, it does not mean we are in a
period of rapid change or transformation. The information age is a mask
for the fact that business is very much as usual. For example:
Our organizations are changing form, but not purpose or beliefs. We are
in a period of rapid consolidation, but questionable improvement. In
every sector, giants are merging, people and costs are being cut, and
competition is disappearing. Institutions are combining as fast as they
can so that there is greater domination by fewer organizations. If you
are in the market for a bank, a hospital, an insurance provider, a
television cable service, a lumber yard or an airplane, your choices
keep shrinking. While the consolidations get explained as necessary for
competition and beneficial to the customer, the opposite is true.
--Customers
not only have fewer suppliers to chose from, but automated customer
information is being substituted for live action customer service. It is
now more difficult to find a human being on the other end of the line
than it was ten years ago before the era of "customer service."
--Automated
answering systems now take longer than in the days when you could talk
to a human being. We used to be able to talk to an airline agent before
their recent improvements in customer service. now we have to punch our
way through a maze of choices before an automated voice tells us that
the service agent is busy meeting the needs of other customers. It won't
be long before we press #, *, four different number choices and end up
talking to ourselves.
--What
remains unchanged is that the institutional survivors still give top
priority to economics and a belief in consistency and control across the
system. Valuing the person and the need for direct human connection
remains a lowpriority. The rhetoric has changed, but the experience
hasn't.
--We
think that if we are exchanging information, we are communicating.
We are being sold the illusion that electronic interaction can bring us
closer together and constitutes a relationship. The fact I can
communicate faster, does not mean I have anything more to say. Been on a
chat line lately…
--Speed
does not equate with quality or contact. More likely speed is hostile to
human connection. Contrary to popular opinion, you cannot have an
intimate relationship over the internet. Electronic connection is not
the equivalent of human touch. For years we were told that 90% of
communication was nonverbal. Body language, eye contact, tone of voice.
Why has that suddenly become irrelevant! Are our expectations of
relationships so low that the 90% no longer matters?
We think that if
something is amazing and fast, it is important and useful.
The internet is a technical and commercial triumph packaged as social
and societal progress. It promises global awareness and human
understanding. Its more honest nature is to speed up our lives so as to
reduce labor costs and to put more and more of the work in someone
else's lap.
--Reduced
transaction time is useful for the unpleasant aspects of life or things
that do not matter. When I don't want to do something, speed becomes
god. For example, reduced transaction time is great for:
o time in the
dentist's chair
o being stuck in traffic
o receiving a performance review
o giving a performance review
o receiving helpful feedback from your children over the age of fourteen
o conversations with your ex-wife about a daughter's wedding
o writing a column for a newsletter
o birthday parties for 3-8 year olds
o sustaining maximum heartbeat on a stairmaster.
--On
the other hand, for the things in life that offer hope and meaning, we
need to slow down the transaction. Let time be god, and speed be the
devil for:
o summer evenings
near a body of water
o watching the sun rise or set
o talking with someone you love
o reaching real consensus with team members on just about anything
o employees who are grateful for the leadership they are receiving
This
article appeared in
News for a Change published by AQP in September 1997
|
