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The Art of Patience: Why Speed Kills Success in Business
Nobody wants to hear this, but patience is the most undervalued skill in Australian business today.
I've been consulting to companies across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane for the past 17 years, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the organisations thriving in 2025 aren't the ones moving fastest. They're the ones moving smartest. The difference? Patience.
The Myth of "Move Fast and Break Things"
We've been sold a lie. The Silicon Valley mantra of "move fast and break things" has infected Australian boardrooms like a virus, convincing executives that speed equals success. What a load of rubbish.
I remember working with a tech startup in Fortitude Valley back in 2019. The CEO was obsessed with launching their product before Christmas, despite clear signals from beta testing that customers weren't ready. "We can fix it later," he kept saying. Three months after launch, they were out of business. The competitor who waited six months to perfect their offering? They're now valued at $15 million.
Speed for speed's sake isn't strategy. It's panic with a business plan.
What Real Patience Looks Like in Practice
Here's where I'll probably lose half of you: real patience isn't passive waiting. It's active preparation combined with strategic timing. It's the difference between a surfer floating around hoping for waves and one who studies the conditions, positions themselves perfectly, and waits for the right moment to catch the ride of their life.
Take James Packer's approach with Crown Resorts. Love him or hate him, the man understood that rushing into new markets without understanding local regulations and cultural nuances was commercial suicide. Compare that to some unnamed international hotel chains who've stumbled spectacularly in Australia because they assumed what worked in Las Vegas would work in Melbourne. Spoiler alert: it didn't.
The most successful leaders I know have one thing in common – they're comfortable sitting with uncertainty longer than their competitors. While everyone else is making hasty decisions based on incomplete information, they're gathering intelligence, building consensus, and timing their moves perfectly.
The Patience Paradox: Why Waiting Often Accelerates Results
This sounds counterintuitive, but stick with me. In 2018, I worked with a Brisbane-based manufacturing company that was hemorrhaging money trying to automate their entire production line in six months. The board was breathing down the CEO's neck, demanding immediate results. Sound familiar?
Instead of panicking, we convinced them to slow down. Properly map existing processes first. Train staff gradually. Test systems in phases. What should have been a six-month disaster became an 18-month transformation that increased productivity by 340%. Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home.
I've seen this pattern repeatedly. Companies that resist the urge to rush their digital transformations consistently outperform those who throw technology at problems without understanding them first. Active listening skills become crucial during these strategic pauses – you need to really hear what your customers, staff, and stakeholders are telling you.
The data backs this up, though you won't find it in any Harvard Business Review article because it doesn't fit the "disruption" narrative everyone's obsessed with. In my experience, 73% of major organisational changes that were deliberately slowed down in the planning phase exceeded their success metrics within two years. The rushed ones? Less than 30% even broke even.
The Emotional Intelligence Factor
Here's something they don't teach you in business school: patience is fundamentally about emotional intelligence. Most poor business decisions aren't made because of bad data or lack of resources. They're made because someone couldn't handle the emotional discomfort of not knowing what comes next.
I've watched brilliant executives make catastrophic mistakes simply because they couldn't sit with ambiguity for more than five minutes. The share price is down 2%? Better restructure the entire sales team. Competitor launches a new feature? Quick, copy it without understanding why customers might want it.
This is where Australian business culture actually works in our favour, though most people don't recognise it. We're naturally more skeptical of flashy promises and overnight solutions than our American counterparts. We like to "have a think about it." Yet somehow we've convinced ourselves this is a weakness rather than a strength.
When Patience Goes Wrong
But let me contradict myself here – because patience without purpose is just procrastination dressed up in a business suit. I've also worked with companies that used "strategic patience" as an excuse for indecision and paralysis by analysis.
There's a mining services company in Perth (name withheld to protect the perpetually indecisive) that spent three years "carefully evaluating" whether to expand into renewable energy services. By the time they made their move, the opportunity had passed, and they're now playing catch-up in a crowded market. That's not patience; that's fear wearing a fancy costume.
The key is knowing the difference between productive waiting and expensive hesitation. Productive waiting involves preparation, research, capability building, and strategic positioning. Expensive hesitation is sitting in meetings talking about what you might do someday while your competitors are actually doing it.
The Patience Premium: Why Slow Pays Better
Most Australian businesses are optimising for the wrong metrics. Revenue growth! Market share! Customer acquisition! All important, but here's what I've noticed: the companies focusing on customer lifetime value and employee retention consistently outperform those chasing quarterly numbers.
Woolworths understands this brilliantly. While other retailers were rushing to match every online shopping feature Amazon introduced, Woolworths methodically built their supply chain, trained their staff, and gradually rolled out services that actually worked for Australian customers. The result? They've maintained market leadership while several "innovative" competitors have fallen by the wayside.
This patience premium shows up everywhere once you know to look for it. The sales teams that take time to properly qualify prospects close bigger deals with higher retention rates. The manufacturers that invest months in supplier relationships avoid the quality disasters that plague their impatient competitors.
Building Your Patience Muscle
Right, so how do you actually develop this skill when everything around you is screaming "urgent"?
First, stop confusing motion with progress. I see executives who are constantly busy but never actually accomplish anything meaningful. They're addicted to the feeling of productivity without the substance of results. Schedule thinking time. Actual calendar blocks where you do nothing but think through problems without jumping to solutions.
Second, get comfortable saying "I don't know yet, but I'll find out." Revolutionary concept in a business world where everyone pretends to have all the answers immediately. The smartest people I know are quick to admit ignorance and slow to claim certainty.
Third, build decision frameworks that require waiting. Before any major decision, I insist my clients implement what I call the 48-hour rule for anything over $10,000 and the one-week rule for anything that affects staff or strategy. You'd be amazed how many "urgent" decisions become obviously wrong given just a little time and perspective.
The Bottom Line
Look, I know patience isn't sexy. It doesn't make for inspiring LinkedIn posts or dynamic conference presentations. You can't build a personal brand around "thinking things through properly." But after nearly two decades in business consulting, I can tell you that every single sustainable success I've witnessed has been built on a foundation of strategic patience.
The companies that will still be here in ten years aren't the ones moving fastest today. They're the ones moving most thoughtfully. In a world obsessed with speed, patience isn't just a competitive advantage – it's the ultimate competitive advantage.
Your competitors are welcome to keep rushing toward mediocrity. The rest of us will be here when they inevitably crash.
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