[Wikimedia-l] Patience

[Michael Snow]

On 5/16/2013 11:52 AM, ENWP Pine wrote:
> I agree that patience is a very important virtue in some situations, such as when we coach newbies or seek consensus among many people. But it's sometimes not a virtue, such as in many crisis situations. As a metrics and performance enthusiast, I feel that it's possible to have an appropriate mix of patience and impatience, and people should be appropriately accountable for their performance.
I suppose it depends what implications you attach to those words, but I 
would not recommend using "impatience" when what you really want is 
"urgency". In my experience, the self-discipline that goes into everyday 
patience can actually remain a virtue in crisis situations as well, as 
it may help you remain clear-headed and make better decisions than you 
would if you let the circumstances overwhelm your ability to think 
rationally. And as Fred points out, a big part of my message relates 
especially to making emergencies out of things that are not.

I also do not believe that patience is in any way incompatible with 
accountability. Patience does not require ignoring commitments, 
discarding performance evaluation, or even disregarding agreed 
timeframes. However, it does mean that the results of the evaluation 
should be well-considered and any consequences appropriate to the 
circumstances. Impatience tends to drive us to choose excessive 
consequences, like a lot of the "somebody should be fired" kind of talk 
over things that are honest mistakes.

--Michael Snow