False Haste: When Waiting Becomes Wisdom
This week I wrote about a lesson that connects my Master of Divinity studies with corporate culture: the discipline of waiting. In Maria Liu Wong’s book On Becoming Wise Together, she frames waiting as a communal wisdom practice, a time to listen, remember, and re-imagine. That perspective challenges the corporate instinct to treat waiting as weakness.
In our rush to look decisive, we confuse urgency with importance. Leaders skip the pause required for discernment, and what we get is “workslop” — half-baked initiatives that collapse under pressure. I shared a story of a pharmaceutical CEO who made the braver choice to hold back, resisting the urge to match competitors’ speed. Her team is still waiting, but their patience has protected them from costly mistakes.
The harder truth is that slowing down requires more courage than speeding up. It forces leaders to hold tension, invite input, and wait for clarity. But when they do, cultures shift. Teams re-engage, strategies sharpen, and results last. Urgency may impress in the moment, but urgency without wisdom burns people out. Slow is not the opposite of progress. Slow is often the precondition for it.
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