It’s possible that you may be struggling even now with getting your organisation or team to where you want them to be. Your “team” may even be your family or your relationships. You may be full of energy, have a fantastic vision, be clear about why you need to move, where you want to be and yet still be failing to make the progress that you were hoping for. That will be causing you frustration and stress and be having a negative impact on the motivation of both you and your team.
At the end of last summer I suffered an accident on a Swiss mountain that necessitated a helicopter rescue, a visit to two hospitals and a significant number of uncomfortable stitches, crutches, pain killers and a limp (for a number of weeks anyhow). Since that time I’ve been looking forwards to running 10km again and at my previous pace. You couldn’t knock that desire from a point of vision, you couldn’t knock me for effort, yet for some reason (and until last Sunday) I never seemed to be getting past the 7km mark.
If you take the metaphor of my leg injury and apply it to your life or business I bet you can find some parallels with where you are right now too.
So what I needed was a breakthrough. Maybe I needed a personal trainer or coach, and perhaps in hindsight that may have been really useful and worth you considering right now. And what I wasn’t expecting was a chance discussion in the playground at my children’s school that connected together a number of dots in my recent reading and that in less than two days got me to where I wanted to be…
The chance discussion went a bit like this:
James: Boy I really struggled with my run the other night. I only did 5km but I was exhausted by the end of it.
Siobhan: Only 5km!
James: (embarrassed) Yes only 5km. But it wasn’t a bad pace.
Siobhan: And what was that?
James: Just under 5 minutes a km.
Siobhan: Wow, that’s pretty fast! Maybe you should try slowing down a bit…
Hmmm. All of a sudden I’m reminded of what Jim Collins and Morten Hansen call “the 20 mile march” in their new book “Great by Choice” and the contrasts between Amundsen and Scott and their strategies and tactics to get to the South Pole. How Amundsen got his team safely their and back by setting and following a regular pace and rhythm whilst Scott and his team would blitz mega distances then have to spend significant times recovering from their over-exertion and exhaustion.
So last Sunday I took the advice of these great coaches and slowed my pace. And guess what? I maybe didn’t break any of my own records but by slowing down by just 12 seconds per km I ran 10.72km, uphill for the last 1km and finished with energy to spare!!!
So how can this story help you in your quest for greatness and success?
Are you outpacing your team? Are they just not ready to run as quickly as you towards the goal and vision that you have?
If you push them now, will they get there with you? And if some do, how many casualties will you have left upon the way?
And if you get there at your pace, how much energy will they have in reserve to take on what’s necessary when you reach your South Pole?
Perhaps, like me, you just need to slow the pace for a while. This doesn’t mean that your team, your partner, are not sharing or are not committed to your goal; they might still be able to make an occasional sprint with you, they might just need you to run alongside them for a while.
And allowing yourself a little more time might prove far more successful in the long term. Imagine it now, your whole team behind you, achieving the vision, achieving service excellence, returning great levels of profit and all of them with you for the long term. Achieving the vision, ready to tackle the new challenges that they find when you get there, celebrating the success together and ready for more!
Now that has to be better, doesn’t it?