People sometimes ask me how my Master of Divinity connects with my work in corporate culture. On the surface theology and organizational strategy look like they belong in entirely different worlds. But lately I have noticed the conversations overlap. And the overlap matters.
I am reading On Becoming Wise Together by Maria Liu Wong for school. She describes waiting not as wasted time but as a kind of communal wisdom practice. Waiting is when we listen, when we remember, when we re-imagine. That reframing has stayed with me. Because in the corporate world, waiting is almost always treated like weakness. Leaders pride themselves on moving fast. We confuse speed with strength. A quick response may look decisive, but too often it skips the pause required for real discernment.
Over time, false haste becomes an unconscious way of being at work. It creeps into culture in ways that normalize. How many times have I told a client we need to get together with the leadership team for two days of future planning only to hear “We can’t possibly get all of the execs that much time away from work.” The unspoken belief is that the company will fall behind if its top leaders stop moving for even 48 hours. In reality, what’s happening is that leaders are confusing what’s urgent with what’s important.
What happens next is familiar. Urgency becomes a reflex, not a choice. Leaders treat email like oxygen, something they can’t step away from. Then their calendars fill with hours of reacting rather than reflecting. New initiatives are rushed into the world half-baked because the act of launching something feels safer than waiting to get it right. Quick answers are rewarded and then we end up with what people are now calling workslop: half-baked strategies, sloppy rollouts, and initiatives that die within weeks. I have been guilty of it myself. The rush feels like progress in the moment. It delivers a quick shot of energy. But it almost always leaves a mess that has to be cleaned up later.
A pharmaceutical company I worked with was facing a major strategic decision about where to locate a new production facility in the face of shifting tariffs. Instead of rushing, the CEO made the counterintuitive choice to pause. She asked her team to hold off on final commitments even though their competitors were sprinting ahead. During that pause, the leadership team listened, ran multiple scenarios and waited for a clearer picture of the trade landscape to emerge. They’re still waiting right now and the tariff landscape continues to surprise the industry.
Here is the part most leaders do not want to admit. Slowing down takes more courage than speeding up. It is easy to say yes right away. It is harder to sit in silence, to hold the tension, and to wait for real alignment to form.
When leaders build in space to pause, something shifts. The clarity that felt unreachable suddenly becomes obvious. Teams that were checked out begin to engage because they see their input matters. Outcomes are stronger because they are built on intention rather than impulse. Progress created this way does not collapse under the next wave of pressure. It lasts.
Urgency may look impressive in a boardroom update, but patience builds discernment. Urgency without wisdom burns people out. Urgency paired with wisdom is different. That kind of pressure sharpens focus and produces results.
Slow is not the opposite of progress. Slow can be the precondition for progress. If you want to move your culture forward, resist the cheap high of speed and choose the discipline of waiting.
Elsewhere In Culture
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/29/ford-ceo-ai-economy-blue-collar
Jim Farley is right to scream. The U.S. has built a glossy narrative around AI and digital transformation while ignoring the crumbling foundation underneath. We celebrate white-collar productivity gains from AI tools, but the people who build the factories, repair the roads, and keep the lights on are left out of the story. We’ve glamorized coding bootcamps and six-figure software jobs while treating skilled trades as second-class. The result? Delays, rising costs, and a generation of young people steered away from the very jobs that make the digital economy possible.
What Farley is pointing to is not just an economic gap but a respect gap. Leaders can’t claim to be “future-focused” if they’re only investing in the shiny parts of the economy and ignoring the essential ones. It’s not enough to host summits and wring our hands over numbers. We need a cultural reset where a kid becoming an HVAC technician is celebrated as much as a kid getting hired at Google. And until leaders connect their AI ambitions to the skilled workers who make the physical world run, their “innovation” will collapse under its own weight.
The “low hire, low fire” market may look steady on a chart, but on the ground it is draining people of possibility. Workers are locked out of upward movement. Recent graduates with impressive credentials are still stuck in coffee chats and rejection emails. Mid-career professionals are settling for part time roles that barely use their skills. Older workers with advanced degrees are cutting years off their resumes in desperation. This is not just about numbers. It is about a culture of hesitation where leaders cling to the teams they already have instead of taking the risk of investing in new talent. That paralysis leaves millions of people underemployed and questioning their worth.
The deeper issue is not whether companies are brave enough to hire, it is how they are using the talent they already have and preparing for the moment when growth does return. A low churn market creates an illusion of safety, but it also builds pressure. Workers who feel stuck eventually disengage, and organizations that stop investing in skills lose their edge. Even when hiring slows, leaders can double down on development, apprenticeship, and mobility inside their walls. That is how they create alignment between today’s cautious reality and tomorrow’s growth. Stability is not just about keeping people in place, it is about keeping them moving forward.