Social critics have been writing for some time now about the principle of deceleration. Hectic activity is one of the ­primary attributes of our daily lives, burdening us as individuals and ­leading to more and more physical and psychological illnesses. We are advised to decelerate in the sense of pausing and regarding our own time as a way to safeguard our health and raise the quality of our lives.    

But what use is this term in the world of business where speed is one of the major decisive factors for success? Where development times, throughput times, and even the validity periods of organizational regulations are being constantly shortened to keep ahead of the competition?    

Our project experience in the telecommunications sector ­demonstrates: quite a lot! If we look at related parameters such as quality and transparency and do not limit our vision ­strictly to the time in which things are accomplished, it frequently ­becomes clear that speed and saving time do not mandatorily lead to an improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency of the ­projects.   

Considering what is really happening   

In its simplest sense, deceleration means the reduction of speed, a slowing down or even slowness. But this alone does not mean we have gained anything, either for effectiveness or even more especially for efficiency. The decisive point is the gain in quality. The point here is not to become slower for its own sake at the decisive moment, but to adjust the speed to the challenges at hand. So deceleration is the movement of a company or project in the direction of comprehensive perception. The more complex the task at hand, the more likely there is a need to decelerate.    

When we examine deceleration as a means to increase effectiveness and efficiency, we regard a company or project as a system which can be accelerated, over-accelerated, or under-accelerated. If acceleration is understood to mean any and every change to or for a system, over-acceleration describes the situation in which the perception of decisive changes and their consequences is ­limited. We can then speak of under-acceleration if there is substantially more energy in the system than can be transferred to the outside.