Slow Decision Making Quotes

Given the slow pace of Washington's bureaucracy, policymakers are often busy solving yesterday's problems. This rearview mirror approach afflicts Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

The British civil service ... is a beautifully designed and effective braking mechanism.

Big government is indeed big, and like another big creature, the sauropod dinosaur, government has a primitive nervous system: The fact of an injury to the tail could take nearly a minute to be communicated to the sauropod brain.

Hurried business is bad business.

People complain about bureaucracy. You haven't seen bureaucracy until you've seen bureaucracy in China.

Lacking a profit motive, workers in the government by and large have a different work ethic from those in private industry. When they could make one call, federal workers take a meeting. When they could find an answer on the Internet, they form a study committee. Instead of appointing one supervisor, they appoint five.

Delay has the odor of the Beltway.

Ironically, when a bunch of very smart people are sitting around a table for hours trying to figure out whether they should do something, that tends to not necessarily lead to the best results.

The velocity of decision making in government was extraordinary slow. It took 18 to 24 months and 15 to 20 trips to Delhi to get a license to import computers.

Governments take too long to get things done and there are far too many varied interests at stake. If you were starting a business today and needed a partner, you would never choose a large bureaucratic institution like the government.

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

Hollywood, they love everything, but they move like molasses. They'll option anything - the worst idea in the world will get optioned just because they want to keep the other person from getting that idea.

It is weary work negotiating with these people [India's Moslem, Hindu and Sikh political leaders] It takes weeks or months to make any progress on a point which ordinary reasonable men would settle in an hour or so.

Brussels has become inefficient and very bureaucratic, which makes it slow to do things. The concept of the United States of Europe will never work.

You know, you try to move the Brussels bureaucracy, and unless you have some capacity to really break it, you can't move it. It just sits there and stares at you.