By Jeff DeJoseph and Toni Maloney

New paradigmers keep pushing a new drug: Speed.

No, not meth. Something far more insidious. Speed in business. Worse. Speed for speed's sake. Worst – the perception of speed.

Now there's nothing wrong with getting things done more efficiently. But we can't help feeling that the new drug, along with connectivity and access is clouding some fundamental components of doing business, like making companies, creating value, and communicating visions. The new drug has distracted us from why we're in business - to move ideas into reality.

For lots of new paradigmers, the new drug is a scrim for their fear of the unknown. If you don't know what you're doing (or don't have the confidence to create on the fly) you'll use the most voguish expressions of the drug - rhetoric, style, flash, arbitrary rules, and white noise - addictively, rampantly, stupidly.

Business today is unimaginable with out digital data, digital communications, digital modeling. But there's more to digital than the happy hum of productivity. The next time you're in an airline club lounge, look around. What are your fellow executives, thinkers, and business leaders doing with their downtime? They're typing e-mails and revising presentations - typing so furiously that if you close your eyes and listen, you might think you're in a soft-touch version of the typing pool of 1950s corporate America. These executives are making last minute appointment changes on cell phones, though all of them have assistants or secretaries.

But why? Digitization, after all, was supposed to make the link between ideas and reality quicker and simpler. So why is every one so busy? Why the frantic activity in the lounge, and afterward - from the plane to the taxi, from the taxi to the modem-equipped hotel suite?

We suggest that– the magazine’s monthly success stories notwithstanding – the Fast Company way of life has skewed the emphasis toward speed and newness in a way that actually depletes our power to do business better, or even well.

That's why we're addressing this humble plea to Fast Company fans. Because we believe that, on the road to the New Business Paradigm, too many companies and their executives are misapplying the new technological resources. We think this misapplication creates a real impediment to thinking - without which, nothing of lasting value can get done. We modestly propose that we're going too fast for our own good, and that we can benefit from slowing down the pace a notch. Maybe even two notches.

Consider the backbone of modern business communication, e-mail. Its selling point is its speed: You don't have to print it, meter it, or even lick an envelope. If you want to "carbon" a hundred people, it's easy. E-mail would appear to be a major advance.

In fact, the speed and ease with which e-mail can be used has resulted in a massive proliferation of quickly composed, ill-considered messages. In a way, e-mail is too easy. Perhaps we need the cost and time of paper, postage, and secretarial labor to give us pause before we rat-a-tat-tat off a speedy response.

Some young managers think their job is to sit by their PCs and respond immediately to incoming e-mails, both internal and external - without real thought, just speed. They don't walk the floor coaching their staff. They don't seek out opportunities for face-to-face meetings with clients. The late David Ogilvy would regularly pop into the office of young copywriters and ask, "How are you doing, what are you doing?" Try to do that through e-mail and your staff thinks big brother is checking on them.

Now consider the whole pile of personal voice and data technologies - modems, beepers, cell phones, voice mail - the sole purpose of which is to make it impossible to escape colleagues, clients, and competition.

What is the quality and usefulness of these endless communications? Business deals are not made in the flash of a digital connection, but painstakingly over time. By the time closure is within range, speed of access is hardly an issue. Can you think of one convincing story of a business, or even an important deal, that was saved or lost because one guy got a call more quickly than another?

Again, constant access is tolerated because constant access is expected - which is not the same thing as necessary.

It stands to reason that business life requiring 20-hour days and multiple all-nighters should emulate the energy and impatience of the very young. But there's another aspect of business life that this image-making completely excludes from consideration.

Leadership is thought-driven. Jeff Bezos planned and developed virtual bookselling just as surely as Henry Ford planned and developed the assembly line. You have to sit down and do the thinking, that is, do the work. This requires patience and concentration and is decidedly unglamorous. (God forbid Fast Company should show CEOs sitting at desks, scribbling notes - that would look like an old Business Week. A Jedi Knight looks cooler than a deskbound thinker.)

We are now getting away from the effects of misapplied tools on the conscious of digital businesspeople, and into the consciousness itself. And increasingly, this is where the problem lies.

High tech has not only given us new work habits - it has also jacked up our expectation of delivery. Decision that were once made overnight are now expected in an hour. We're not talking about legitimate client expectations of product and service delivery. We're talking about colleagues. And we’re talking about the expectations we each have of ourselves.

Some people, by their nature, need to be pushed to decide quickly. That's always been true. But it is also true that many important decisions, discoveries, and insights are found only in the fullness of time - a fullness that is disappearing from business environments. As one weary strategist describes it, "Say it's 1987, and you're in a high-pressure, multi-agenda meeting. The other guys are pressuring you to do something. You tell them you'll have to talk to your people - who are of course at that moment unreachable - and then you'll get back to them. So you could go to the elevator, get in the car, go back to the office - and avoid all calls until you're ready to do something.

"Now say it's 1999, same situation. Leave the meeting, and by the time you get to the elevator your cell phone is ringing. Someone's yelling 'What are you going to do!' So your anxiety ratchets up. You get to the car. Two phones are ringing. You get back to the office, and there's e-mail waiting, demanding immediate answers - because that's the way things are done. We have instant access, all right. What we no longer have is time to think."

And thinking is important.

Perhaps the time has come to choose high-touch over high-tech.

No, we are not Luddites. We don't propose banning e-mail, trashing call phones, or even tossing out the Palm Pilot. We do suggest judging each high-tech encounter with a simple question: Am I using this tool, or is this tool using me?

If digital tools and their pernicious effects are not giving you time to think, we have some simple practices that will cut techno-clutter and get you back to business:

Many executives, lured by the digital urge, make the mistakes of devoting time to learning HTML, Persuasion, Quark, and other office technologies in hopes that it will make them look more with-it (or at least increase their credibility with the tech guys.) Forget it. You don't need to learn CGI script to understand click-through rates on Web banners.

If you prefer coding to decision making, you're in the wrong job.

Do not adopt new technologies right out of the gate. Wait until they are unavoidable to your business. This is counterintuitive in the digital age, but necessary. Tech companies have made us all beta testers. Once upon a time, a technological innovation was allowed to gestate through research and commercial phases. No longer. Not when the fashion is to get it first. Real beta testers get paid. Do you? Refuse the job. Don't upgrade just because Microsoft says it's time. If the new version of Word crashes your computer because it's too big, swallow your pride and use Word 4.0 to write your letters.

Make the format follow the function.

In your daily dealings with people, make human firewalls to technology - not vice versa.

Let everyone (clients and co-workers) know how seldom you read e-mail and listen to voice mail. Force them to interact with you. Institute business practices in your company that maximize face time. Demand, for example, that proposals be delivered in person (never by e-mail). Find other ways to limit your subordinates' reliance on technologies. Limit e-mails to one "cc" apiece.

Remember the ultimate power symbol is being inaccessible.

Don't be shy, halfhearted, or apologetic about what you're doing, particularly if you're a leader - because advocacy is something leaders do. Spend quality time with your staff, not just your kids. Sit side-by-side with that young new recruit and build loyalty to your and your company the old-fashioned way - charisma. Once upon a time, businesspeople were afraid of high-tech. We've come full circle now, and people are frightened of not being high-tech.

Prepare for resistance. You'll be called rude, even as your technology use becomes more efficient and grounded in reality. You'll be accused of being "unreachable," even while the quality of your communications actually improve. Explain, when you can, but don't back down. Be a real contrarian. Distinguish yourself by your insistence on real communication, and devotion to real thought.

Above all, remember why you wanted to be in business in the first place. Why did you originally want to go to work? Just to make money? Just to be surrounded by shiny toys? Or was it because you wanted to make a difference, to make things happen, to pull the levers and flip the switches and light up the world with your brilliance?

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© Toni Maloney and Jeff DeJoseph / Through the Loop Consulting Ltd 1998-1999