One of the panelists at an event I attended recently said something that really made me think.

Back in the day, if you wanted to get a message from California to New York, you had to do it through the Pony Express. The trip was long and difficult, and your message may or may not make it to its destination.

Today, I can send a message from California to New York in seconds.

Everything is getting faster, including the speed of technological advances. But the time it takes to build a relationship remains the same as it did in the Pony Express days.

As I half listen to the Democratic Debate (where everyone is saying the same things, but trying to stand out), I think about how difficult it is to change the culture of a nation. Moving the needle on gun control isn’t as simple as passing a bill, it requires changing the minds of millions of people. It requires a cultural shift. The same thing goes for making progress on issues of war, peace, the environment…the list goes on. Large scale progress doesn’t happen without building relationships, without understanding other people’s points of view, or even without simply getting people to like you.

The public gets more and more used to getting everything it wants at the click of a button. I used to wait hours to download a small file and now I get frustrated if it takes more than 20 seconds. So when we want the environment to get better NOW and wages to go up NOW and mass shootings to disappear NOW – we get frustrated when years pass and it seems nothing is any different.

Will politicians, businesses, and nonprofits be able to keep up with the growing demand for quick action?

Well, as I said the pace of building relationships hasn’t changed. Social change will never move as fast as technology does. But when leaders are willing to toss their egos aside and focus on quickly identifying shared goals, we might see faster results.