# Flaws in the Organizational Pacing Norm By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-08-01 Pacing within a business and organization is an understudied and underappreciated aspect of human progress. It is common to believe some industries are slow while others are fast. For example, government and massive multi-national organizations are slow. Meanwhile, startups and small businesses are fast. Once one thinks this way, cultural norms confuse the situation. Big and slow quickly transform into inefficient and wasteful. Small and fast transform into new and innovative. This transformation is our human nature to simplify the complex, but it is not necessary for big and slow to be inefficient and wasteful or for small and fast to be new and innovative. They are completely interchangeable. Yet, the dominant norm is to associate these two dimensions of organizational being as causal. After all, seeing size and speed is much easier than seeing efficiency and innovation. This error is only a problem once one believes everything would be better if it were small and fast; therefore, efficient, innovative, and agile. These three pillars are the dominant norms that unlock the secret of organizational and managerial success. But are efficiency, innovation, and agility success? Furthermore, how can one say a government or multi-national corporation is unsuccessful? They got to where they are for some reason. It is easy to say that these big places lost their way and that they used to be efficient, innovative, and agile. Perhaps, but why do they continue to exist year after year? Organizations are complex systems within an even more open and complex system. How much of their operations are driven by natural systems, our biological programming, and human-engineered markets? Big and small organizations operate as they must. Attempting to apply one limited mental model to the whole of business and organizational theory is an exercise in failure and frustration. If one wants to make progress, consider the pace and flow of the river. #### Related Items [[Organization]] [[Management]] [[Paradigms]] [[Thinking]] [[Systems Thinking]] [[Efficiency]] [[Progress]] [[Speed]]