THE TEN-MINUTE COMPANY – WHEN SPEED BECOMES THE NEW ETHIC
It began as a marvel of convenience. The rise of “quick
commerce.” Groceries, meals, and medicines, all arriving in ten minutes or
less. A perfect blend of precision, technology, and impatience. We told
ourselves it was progress. But what started as innovation in delivery speed is
now quietly rewriting the DNA of how organisations themselves operate.
Boards and executives today seem to have adopted the
same logic that fuels instant delivery apps. Faster is smarter, cheaper is
better, and patience is a liability.
Quarterly returns have become the new stopwatch. The
language of leadership still sounds noble. Mission statements promise
sustainability, ethics, and loyalty. Yet the tempo of decision-making has
accelerated beyond the pace of reflection.
Walk through the corridors of any modern organisation,
and you’ll see it on the walls. Golden words like Integrity, Commitment, Purpose.
They inspire, they reassure. But often, they serve as moral wallpaper covering
an internal paradox. Leaders speak of long-term careers and value systems,
while decisions are made for short-term optics, for the next quarter’s earnings
call or investor applause.
It’s the quick commerce model applied to
corporate governance. Deliver results faster, make decisions cheaper, cut
complexity, and declare victory before the next cycle. The board feels
efficient, the shareholders feel rewarded, and the institution feels
temporarily alive. But in this sprint for performance, something deeper erodes
the space for pause, ethics, and accountability.
As one senior employee in a manufacturing company once
confessed, “We’re told to treat our careers like a marathon, but the company
runs it like a ten-minute quick commerce race.”
The next chapter in this story unfolds through
artificial intelligence, the ultimate driver of organisational velocity. Across
industries, AI tools now streamline operations, forecast demand, and even
decide whom to retain or replace. Efficiency metrics bloom on dashboards and
payrolls shrink. But when jobs disappear, it’s never the board that
shoulders the blame. It’s the algorithm.
The irony is profound. AI doesn’t decide to replace
humans, it is people who make that call. Human leaders choose to let machines
take over functions that once defined craftsmanship and care. It’s a decision
often presented as technological inevitability, but in truth, it’s an ethical
convenience. It distances responsibility.
A global retailer’s logistics AI, for
instance, optimized delivery costs so aggressively that warehouse staff began
missing safety breaks. The AI wasn’t being unethical, it was simply obeying its
human-designed objective: speed above all.
In another financial institution, a
recruitment AI showed bias against candidates from certain universities, not
because it was flawed, but because it had been trained on years of biased human
hiring patterns.
Machines, in essence, are extensions of their makers.
If boards and executives operate with a “ten-minute” mindset, the algorithms
they create will mirror that same moral speed which is rapid, transactional,
and indifferent.
What’s being lost is not just job security or
traditional hierarchy, it’s meaning. A growing fatigue is spreading across
corporate cultures. Not just a tiredness of workload, but of purpose. Teams
are stretched between efficiency targets and moral discomfort. They’re told to
be loyal, and yet reminded that loyalty can be easily replaced by automation.
This fatigue has a distinctive character.
It’s the weariness of knowing that slogans about “people-first leadership”
exist alongside performance metrics that treat people as variable costs. It’s
the haunting realization that integrity has become a timed KPI rather than a
core belief.
The metaphor of “ten-minute delivery” captures this
perfectly. The faster organisations chase outcomes, the more they risk
delivering unfinished visions, undercooked values, and overpromised cultures. In
governance terms, the race for efficiency has become a quiet exit from empathy.
Good governance isn’t about eliminating speed. It is
about knowing what not to accelerate. Digital transformation, for instance,
demands rapid adoption, but ethical transformation requires deliberate
stillness. Compliance structures, too, can be built in record time, but
credibility, once lost, can’t be delivered back in ten minutes.
Boards that truly understand stewardship recognize that
time is a moral asset. They know that trust, like fine craftsmanship, cannot be
“optimized.” They resist the urge to measure human contribution purely through
velocity and cost. More importantly, they treat AI not as a scapegoat, but as a
mirror reflecting their own ethical DNA.
When that mirror is clean, technology amplifies virtue.
When that mirror is stained, it automates indifference.
The future doesn’t need slower technology, it needs more
measured leadership. It requires boards that can pause to ask not “How fast can
this be done?” but “Should this be done at this speed?” Only if the answer is a
resounding yes in the interest of all stakeholders, then by all means it
should.
It needs management teams that see progress not as acceleration, but as balance
between results and reflection, between innovation and integrity.
Governance in the age of AI and instant gratification
must learn from the irony of quick commerce. You can deliver a pizza in ten
minutes, but you cannot deliver trust, culture, or conscience that way. The
organisations that will thrive tomorrow are not the ones that operate fastest,
but those that endure longest, because they understand that
leadership, like ethics, takes time to rise.
The ten-minute company may deliver profit today, but
the one that slows down to think, listen, and care will stand a better chance
to deliver purpose forever.
