There was a time when taking a photograph meant something different.

Before digital cameras, before smartphones, before the luxury of infinite retakes, photography was an act of discipline. You had a roll of film 24 or 36 exposures, no more. Each frame cost money. Each shot required patience. You composed carefully. You waited for the right light, the right angle, the right moment. You knew you could not afford to waste a single frame.

Then digital arrived. Suddenly, you could shoot a hundred frames and delete ninety-nine. The cost of a bad shot dropped to zero. The discipline of waiting was replaced by the convenience of retaking.

Something similar has happened in boardrooms.

Director’s today is drowning in information. Board packs arrive by email. Messages flash with updates. Dashboards refresh in real time. Quarterly earnings, instant analytics, and endless streams of data have created the illusion that more information equals better decisions.

But more information is not the same as better judgment.

Just as digital cameras trained us to shoot first and delete later, digital tools have trained directors to decide first and correct later. The unconscious assumption is that mistakes can be fixed that decisions are as disposable as digital photographs.

One recent industry survey puts a number on the feeling: of 400 directors, CEOs, and CFOs surveyed across the UK, US, Nordics, and Middle East, 86% said overly rigid or inconsistent decision-making processes had contributed to a delayed, rushed, or poor board decision in the past six months.

What the Research Actually Shows

McKinsey’s own research on decision-making gives the clearest account of the mechanism at work. A 2026 article on cognitive overload describes what the firm calls “deliberate calm“ protecting the brain from overload so that reasoning has room to function, rather than defaulting to mental shortcuts under pressure. The piece opens with a leadership team making high stakes call late on a Friday evening, exhausted, distracted, and quietly reaching for the safety of familiar biases instead of genuinely weighing the decision. McKinsey proposes is not more information or more speed. It is the discipline of slowing down enough to think clearly when the pressure to move fast is highest deliberate calm as a defense against the biases that heavy cognitive load makes more likely.

A second strand of evidence complicates the simple assumption that speed and quality trade off against each other. A 2021 study of 117 UK firms, drawing on survey data from top management teams, found that the relationship between decision speed and decision quality is not fixed it depends on environmental munificence, meaning how abundant an organisation’s resources are. The researchers found that munificence markedly alters the positive effects decision speed is usually assumed to have, particularly in dynamic environments undercutting the assumption that faster is always better, especially for well-resourced organisations that have less excuse for rushing.

Separately, psychological research on patience as an individual trait rarely conducted in boardrooms, but informative nonetheless offers a consistent picture of what patience does for people under pressure. Patience is defined in the literature as the tendency to remain calm in the face of disappointment, distress, or suffering not passivity, but active self-regulation under strain.

Together, the evidence establishes something more modest and more useful, meaning patience is not a soft or old-fashioned virtue. It is a measurable, learnable capacity that erodes under cognitive load and correlates with a person’s ability to think clearly, regulate emotion, and resolve conflict well which is exactly the capacity a board needs when the pressure to decide quickly is highest.

The very tools that provide directors with more information also train them to expect immediacy. Speed becomes a proxy for decisiveness.

The Paradox of Patience

Patience in the boardroom is not passivity. It is not indecision. It is not the avoidance of responsibility.

Patience is a risk management discipline.

And yet, boards continue to equate speed with competence, treating a quick answer as evidence of a sharp mind. McKinsey’s research suggests the opposite is often true: decisions made under heavy cognitive load fatigue, distraction, compressed time are precisely the ones most vulnerable to bias, because an overloaded mind reaches for whatever feels familiar rather than what is actually correct.

When directors wait deliberately, actively, with intention they create space for better information to emerge, for alternative perspectives to surface, for second thoughts to be examined. They reduce the likelihood of overlooking critical details or succumbing to groupthink.

The best board decisions are not the fastest. They are the ones that wait long enough to see what others miss.

This is the paradox: in a world that rewards speed, the most valuable skill a director can develop is the discipline to wait.

Three Practices for Reclaiming Patience

1. The 24-Hour Rule

For any decision that is not time-critical, directors should agree to wait 24 hours between the final discussion and the final vote.

This is not delay. It is a cooling-off period a chance for second thoughts, for new information to surface, for quiet reflection. It is also a safeguard against the pressure to decide immediately, which often leads to suboptimal outcomes.

2. The Silent Session

Before any major decision, the board should spend 15 minutes reading silently, individually, without phones, without conversation.

This practice forces directors to engage with the material directly, rather than relying on summaries or oral presentations. It also creates a moment of collective pause, breaking the rhythm of rapid-fire discussion exactly the kind of deliberate slowing McKinsey’s research identifies as a defense against decisions made under cognitive overload.

3. The Decisional Journal

Directors should record the logic of their decisions not to justify them later, but to make the decision-making process visible.

When directors articulate why they decided what they decided, they think more clearly in the moment. The act of writing forces discipline exposes gaps in reasoning and creates a record that can be reviewed and improved over time.

The Photographer’s Boardroom

The best photographers are not the ones who shoot the most frames. They are the ones who wait the longest who understand that great images are not captured, they are revealed.

The same is true of great boards.

The data is clear; boards are underperforming relative to their own ambitions. They are rushing decisions, may relying on inconsistent processes, and falling short of the value they are meant to create. The problem is not a lack of intelligence or effort. It is a lack of patience a structural, cultural, and deeply ingrained impatience that digital tools have only accelerated.

Patience is not a luxury, it is a discipline one that digital culture has eroded, but one that directors can reclaim. In a world that rewards speed, the most valuable skill a director can develop is the discipline to wait.

The future of corporate governance will not belong to the fastest boards, but to the wisest ones.

Digital technology will continue to accelerate the flow of information, but it cannot replace judgment. Patience is not a luxury; it is a discipline that directors must consciously reclaim.

If Shackleton Governance emphasises courage, resilience and humanity when navigating unfamiliar terrain, The Photographer’s Boardroom complements that philosophy by demonstrating that good leadership equally requires patience, careful observation and the discipline to wait before acting. Together, the future of corporate governance will depend not merely on directors who can make decisions quickly, but on directors who possess the judgment to know when the right decision has not yet arrived.

The article was written by Chong Wai Kuan.

Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash.