Fundamentals of Level Three Leadership

42. Patient Impatience

Concept

One of Bob Johnson’s principles for managing effectively in unfamiliar places is what he calls patient impatience.¹⁸ Bob wanted to get things done correctly and quickly. The faster one shows results, the faster the hemorrhaging would stop. When working in a new environment or a different culture, one can expect that (a) there might be a learning curve and (b) the host culture might not view time the same way one’s home culture does. So Johnson advises being impatient for results but to expect the need to be patient while one’s colleagues learn different ways of doing things and one’s self learns to adapt to local time rhythms.

There is a similar principle in the martial arts. One may know how to make a middle block, ...