Does Speed Kill Ethics and Morality?

Reflections on The Relationship between Speed and Ethics

Hello Dear,

Bureaucracy. What thoughts does the word bring to your mind? Especially if you are not a bureaucrat or in other words a “government servant”, it is highly likely that this word brings to mind the picture of a complex and difficult-to-navigate web of slow and sluggish procedures and processes. And yes, someone is likely to recall such a picture even if one has experienced numerous examples of well-performing government programmes and projects, for which “the bureaucracy” also deserves at least some of the credit.

And if you are a bureaucrat, well, interestingly enough, it seems to me that a lot many bureaucrats do not like to call themselves so - preferring to call themselves as officers or civil servants, for instance. Clearly, the terms bureaucracy and bureaucrat have acquired a heavy dose of pejorative connotations (to a large extent - justifiably), so much so that even serving bureaucrats prefer to not think of themselves in those terms.

Among the many dishonourable attributes for which the bureaucracy is blamed and lambasted, a major one is plain and simple inefficiency. In other words, massive waste or under-utilization of public resources. Delays. High costs. Poor results. These are some of its manifestations, expressed in very general terms.

No wonder then, that we seem to have become enraptured by an ethos of efficiency. One way this is manifesting is in the now-transformed nature of our relationship with time. As Nike would have it, “Just Do It”. Exhibit a “bias for action”. Speed is of the essence. We want it now. And almost everything seems to be and to have become urgent, if not “immediate” and “top priority”.

If you know me, and more so, if you have been reading the articles in this #NotJust newsletter, you can imagine that I would have multiple concerns about this almost single-minded preoccupation with speed and efficiency. Of course, I do not justify or endorse inefficiency. At the same time, it is far too easy to be blinded by the drive towards efficiency and thus cause a lot of public harm than that elusive ideal of public good. While the potential harms are many, let us today explore what is perhaps a dimension which has mostly been overlooked.

What is this dimension which is easy to escape our attention? What I would like to share with you today, is the relationship between speed and ethics.

What do you think? Is there any relationship between the urge and the need to do things faster, and the ethical and moral quotient of our thoughts and actions? What is this relationship? What are your thoughts? What is your intuition on the matter?

I am clear about my intuitions on this subject. I believe that…

Speed crowds out morality and ethics.

Yes, when the workplace environment becomes such that speed is the most important metric by which one’s performance will be assessed, it leaves very little space, if any, for thinking of any sort to happen. In fact, in organizations which are locked in a particularly tight embrace with the ethos of speed, it is #NotJust that speed is the most important; it might also be that if you become slow, you are dead. It is as if slow performance is #NotJust zero performance, but a big negative performance.

Indeed, there can be situations and industries where speed is indeed a matter of do-or-die. However, it is expected that when speed is such a top survival requirement, the industry, the profession or the organization would have evolved policies and norms which provide principled guidance to all employees and other stakeholders, in making these high-stakes decisions in both a fast and a professionally sound manner. In other words, such situations and industries call for policies which have ethics and morality hardwired into them, thus reducing the need for employees to tax their ethical and moral compass afresh each time.

The situation becomes catastrophic if the organization gives top priority to speed, and at the same time, has no policies or even well-founded norms which provide principled guidance to its people. This could place people, especially those who have not yet chosen to forget that man is a moral animal, under very high stress. They would be torn between the pressure to act fast, lest their actions come to nothing or cause harm; and the ethical dissonance and moral disorientation due to the need to form a sound moral conviction and make a proper ethical assessment of the actions they are called upon to perform. And the more novel and complex the situation, the more time and peace of quiet one would need in order to exercise one’s ethical judgements wisely.

Faced with such a quandary and the ensuing stress and burden, employees have an easy way out. Well, a convenient way, rather. To put it bluntly, they can tell the voice of their conscience to shut the heck up. They can find consolation in the rationalization that there is no time to delve into these philosophical questions. They can pretend to presume that these hard moral questions would have already been considered and satisfiably addressed by those who have passed on the instructions to them. They can tell themselves that when everyone around them is vying for speed and speed only, when quick action is all that is expected and rewarded, it is not only foolhardy but suicidal as well to bother about thorny questions of good and bad, right and wrong.

And there we have, my friend, the slow and gradual but almost-sure death of ethics and morality. Almost-sure, not fully-certain death, since hey, I would like to believe that every one of us can potentially make a comeback. Can’t we? Of course, such a comeback becomes progressively more difficult, when we expand the unit of analysis from the individual to the group or further to an organization or society.

So yes, if we agree that speed can crowd out ethics and morality, here is a further proposition.

Often, a major reason why a system embraces speed is nothing but the power it gives the system to make choices which are immoral or amoral.

I think this point is fairly obvious. Knowing very well that the drive for speed dims our ethical antennas and diminishes our moral impulses, malicious or self-serving organizational actors may find in speed the salvific elixir which rids their organizations of the stultifying burdens of ethics and morality.

And yes, this can very well become a vicious circle, with higher speeds leading to lower morality, which in turn allows the organization to run ever-faster and become ever-more unethical and immoral!

So, the next time you find someone singing an unqualified and unconditionally appreciative paean to speed and efficiency, you know how you may help him or her see the other dark side of the story as well.

What say? Does this make sense? Is this helpful? Do let me know, thank you.

Here is a read I found on this topic just now: Ethics at High Speed