Revisiting Babel

Is it possible to move faster by going slower? The concept defies our intuition, yet such a thing may be possible.

For example, on one recent project a team made significant progress. The details were related to me at the Open Source Bridge 2009 conference. I won't go into them here, as they are not important. The important point is that the team completed its task, faster than expected, and under budget.

This progress was surprising as the different team members came from different countries and spoke different languages. They all spoke English, and used it as the common language for the project, but none were fluent in it.

How could such a team make any progress, never mind rapid progress?

The speculation is that since English was a second language, team members spent more than the usual amount of time listening to other members. Processing a second language is often harder; one must pay more attention and often ask for clarification.

The simple acts of listening and asking for clarification may have made the difference.