Is Speed Equal to Intelligence?

We live in a world that seems to reward speed. The faster you respond to an email, the better. The faster you finish a report, the more productive you are considered. The faster you solve a problem, make a decision, submit a form, prepare a household budget, complete school homework, or crack an interview, the smarter you appear. We learn speed in school may be, where solving your exam paper in a given time before others are done with it, it's considered smart, winning a race is amazing- it becomes more about speed than fitness. 

Somewhere along the way, we have started believing that speed and smartness aka intelligence are the same thing. But are they?

Back in 2009-10, I used to teach the Introduction of a Learning Organisation to MBAs, that's when I read the concept of Systems Thinking. And I was fascinated that although everything in the world is dependent on each other, yet I never had seen the world this way before. Then I kept deducting how actions take shape and snowball into bigger decisions, goals, returns for us. 

Everyday, from the moment we wake up, we are making decisions. Some are small and some are significant. We are constantly moving from one task to the next, one conversation to the next, one deadline to the next. Everything feels urgent. Everything feels like it needs an immediate response.

In this rush, I often wonder whether we are giving ourselves enough time to notice the consequences of our actions aka what Systems Thinking speaks. 

In this world of speed, I have seen leaders writing about 'Pausing to reflect', 'Learning from feedback'. 

Are we listening to the feedback our environment is giving us? Are we observing the patterns that our decisions create over weeks, months, and years?

Because intelligence is not just about making a move, it is also about understanding what happened after the move was made. A decision may feel right in the moment, but what did it lead to? Did it strengthen trust? Did it solve the problem? Did it create new challenges? Did it encourage the behaviours we wanted to see?

The answers are often hidden in the feedback around us. And yet, many of us are so busy making the next move that we never stop long enough to observe the results of the previous one.

Perhaps intelligence is not just about how quickly we act. Perhaps it is also about how deeply we observe.