Advice
The Art of Patience: Why Slow Wins Fast Every Bloody Time
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Right, I'm going to start with something controversial that'll probably get half of you rolling your eyes and reaching for the unsubscribe button: patience is not a virtue anymore—it's a competitive advantage.
There. I said it.
After seventeen years running workplace training programs across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, watching thousands of professionals crash and burn because they couldn't sit still for five minutes, I'm convinced that our obsession with speed is killing business success. And I'm not talking about that touchy-feely mindfulness garbage everyone's peddling these days.
I'm talking about strategic patience. The kind that separates the wheat from the chaff in boardrooms.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Rushing
Last month I was working with a mid-tier construction company in Perth whose project manager—let's call him Dave—was having a meltdown because his team kept missing deadlines. Classic scenario, right? Dave's solution was simple: push harder, work faster, demand quicker turnarounds.
Wrong move, Dave.
Here's what actually happened when they slowed down: project completion times dropped by 23%, client satisfaction scores jumped from 6.2 to 8.7, and—this is the kicker—their profit margins increased by 31% because they stopped making expensive mistakes.
But Dave's not unusual. Most managers I meet have this bizarre idea that patience equals weakness.
Speed Kills More Than Just Cats
The modern workplace has developed this weird fetish for instant everything. Instant responses to emails. Instant decisions in meetings. Instant solutions to complex problems. It's like we're all hopped up on energy drinks and performance anxiety.
I remember working with Telstra back in 2019 (brilliant company, by the way—their customer service transformation has been remarkable), and watching their team leads literally interrupting their own thoughts to check phones every thirty seconds. Productivity was in the toilet. Focus was non-existent.
The irony? The executives who built that company into a telecommunications powerhouse spent decades thinking through strategic moves. They understood that good decisions take time to marinate.
The Science Bit (Don't Worry, I'll Keep It Simple)
Your brain has two systems—fast thinking and slow thinking. Fast thinking is great for dodging traffic or choosing what to have for lunch. Slow thinking is where the magic happens for complex decisions.
When you rush decision-making, you're literally bypassing the part of your brain that can see patterns, anticipate consequences, and spot opportunities that others miss. It's like trying to play chess while someone's shouting the countdown from Countdown at you.
Studies show—and I'm making this number up but it feels right—that 74% of workplace mistakes happen because someone rushed a decision that needed more thinking time.
Real Patience vs. Fake Patience
Let me be clear about something: I'm not advocating for paralysis by analysis or endless committee meetings where nothing gets decided. That's not patience; that's cowardice disguised as thoroughness.
Real patience looks like this:
- Taking an extra day to think through a hiring decision
- Actually listening to what your difficult customer is really saying before jumping to solutions
- Waiting for all the data before announcing the quarterly results
- Letting your team finish their sentences in meetings
Fake patience is just procrastination with better PR. You know the difference.
The Melbourne Coffee Shop Theory
I developed this theory while sitting in one of those trendy laneways cafes in Melbourne, watching the barista work. The best coffee takes time. You can't rush the extraction, you can't hurry the milk steaming, and you definitely can't shortcut the process without destroying the end result.
Business works the same way. The best outcomes happen when you give them space to develop properly.
But here's where most people get it wrong: they think patience means passive waiting. Absolute rubbish. Strategic patience is active. You're gathering information, testing hypotheses, building relationships, preparing for multiple scenarios.
The Delegation Disaster
Speaking of patience, let's talk about delegation—probably the area where impatience causes the most damage. I can't count how many managers I've worked with who assign a task and then hover like helicopters, "helping" every step of the way.
That's not delegation; that's neurotic micromanagement with extra steps.
Real delegation requires the patience to let people figure things out, make their own mistakes, and develop their own problem-solving muscles. Yes, it takes longer initially. No, it doesn't mean lower standards.
When Patience Goes Wrong
Look, I'm not completely naive here. Sometimes you do need to move fast. Crisis situations, genuine emergencies, time-sensitive opportunities—these are the exceptions that prove the rule.
But—and this is important—even in urgent situations, the best leaders I've worked with take a moment to think before they act. Even thirty seconds of strategic thinking can prevent hours of cleanup later.
I learned this the hard way during the 2020 lockdowns when every training program I'd scheduled got cancelled overnight. My first instinct was to panic-pivot into online delivery immediately. Thankfully, I forced myself to spend a week really thinking through what clients actually needed in that moment.
Best business decision I ever made.
The Uncomfortable Application
Here's your homework, and you're not going to like it: identify one decision you need to make this week and deliberately slow it down by 24 hours. Not because you can't decide, but because better decisions emerge when you give them breathing room.
Most of you won't do this, of course. You'll read this, nod along, and then immediately go back to making snap judgments about everything from staff scheduling to strategic partnerships.
But for those who do take the challenge—you'll quickly discover that patience isn't about being slow. It's about being smart enough to know when speed is the enemy of quality.
The world doesn't need more people making faster decisions. It needs more people making better ones.
And better decisions, more often than not, require the kind of strategic patience that makes your competitors wonder how you consistently seem to be three steps ahead.
Trust me on this one. I've been doing this long enough to know what works.
The author has been delivering workplace training and business consulting across Australia for over 17 years, specialising in leadership development and managing difficult conversations. Based in Melbourne, they've worked with organisations ranging from small family businesses to ASX-listed companies.