He looked at the clock, exactly 1.8 seconds after he pressed the "send" button for a four hundred-word message presenting a new idea. He burst out laughing bitterly. 1.8 seconds, not enough for an ordinary person to read the first two lines, let alone digest a whole proposal. But the other person answered very quickly. "Did the boss read carefully and finalize so quickly?", he tapped the keyboard, intended to send it but then deleted it. In this office, delay is the culprit, and "slow response" is a manifestation of poor attitude. Everyone is proud because the group's average response time index is always below 30 seconds.
In the afternoon meeting that afternoon, the group manager raised a tablet, proudly presenting a progress report: "Look at it! Internal interaction speed this week increased by 40%. Messages never hang for more than 2 minutes. We are operating standard just like a machine!".
The whole room applauded. Only he sat still. He recalled last week, also because of that "fast and accurate" approach, the whole team mistakenly approved a dossier with incorrect data worth hundreds of millions. The reason is simple, the file was sent at 11 pm, the responsible person pressed "Ok to approve" at 11:01 am right in bed, his eyes had not even fully opened.
During break time, he stepped out onto the balcony to breathe air, his colleague also came out, his hand still not leaving the phone that was typing continuously. "What's wrong, honey? I see you texting and responding much slower these days?". He asked back: "Have you ever pressed "OK" but hadn't had time to think about anything?" He paused for a beat, his finger swiping on the screen stopped halfway. "Why think for so long? Data is available, process is available. Now is the era of instantaneous reflexes. You think too long, you are blocking the flow of work for the whole group!
But humans are not signal transmitters that need zero latency?", he smiled lightly: "Last week, I spent three days coming up with a new direction. But when sending via chat, he pressed "To calculate later" after exactly 5 seconds. So are those 5 seconds judged by experience, by emotion, or just by the reflex of extinguishing anything unprecedented?
The colleague was silent. Suddenly, the phone in his pocket vibrated again. A message from a groupmate: "Boss just sent a new plan to the group, quickly check in to deploy!". Dozens of symbols "Agree", "Check in", "Ok boss" of the remaining people were jumping continuously on the chat box. His fingers were raised to the keyboard as usual, but then, he stopped, telling his colleague: "Let me finish this cup of tea first. Come back to the room in ten minutes, I will think and answer".
