"Get it now -- and enjoy it later" is one of the guiding principles in the dotcom world. Speed is fiercely addictive, and so is the promise of fast money. But if building instant fortunes means treating people like machines -- running them around the clock until they burn out and then bringing in next year's models -- then the best and the brightest are eventually going to begin looking elsewhere. They'll trade paper options for real options. Everything happens faster now -- which means that short-term thinking has long-term consequences sooner. The companies that last will be the ones that hear the wake-up call now and realize, going forward, that their future depends less on the products that they're selling than it does on the people who create those products.
Tony Schwartz (tschwartz@fastcompany.com) is a writer and speaker who leads workshops on life-work balance.
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