Technology giveth, technology taketh away. While it's great (for example) to have much of human knowledge one search-box away, it's distracting and overwhelming. It's difficult not to "satisfice" - to take the probably-good-enough answer. Better takes longer - better thinking, better options, better results.

It's almost a running joke at Say It Visually that our clients - with all due affection - are in such a hurry that they frequently have to pay someone else to think. There's a grain of truth to it, though. Back-to-back conference calls and Inbox 1000 make concentration and creativity very difficult.

I think there's a balance to the job of effective communication. The more time (and creativity) expended on the communicator's side, the less time (and decoding) required for the communicatee to 'get it.' It's easy to rush the job of writing, designing, assembling a presentation and so on - it's even easy to make it Look Good, despite the rush. (Powerpoint Templates, I'm looking right at you...)

But if the other guy doesn't get it, he'll satisfice elsewhere. He'll check out. He'll do Blackberry Prayers during your speech. He'll spend 28 seconds on your zillion-dollar web site, then click on to your competitors. He'll forget you in an hour.

We have internal processes - seriously - that are all about allocating the time for thinking and creativity. We're not aiming to be the fastest at explaining things - just the best.