The Fastest In The World

If I asked you to name the fastest man in the world today the chances are you will name one of the big sprint heroes of the day. There is much hype around the Men’s 100m event in the world of televised athletics. It is a big prestige event that draws a lot of our attention due to the media focus on it. There is incredible build up, a bit of rivalry. Hours of training and dedication boil down to a short stretch of rubber. The gun goes and less than ten seconds later it is all over. Meanwhile the guy running the marathon has another two hours and 42 kilometres to go.

We are becoming conditioned to the sprint. The internet has generated a short attention span. Its blitz media and growing demand for more generates a pressure to operate in short iteration cycles. There is a tendency in a crisis economy to look to flip the quick deal, make your money and move on. In your mind the faster you can keep flipping the more you make. So we trade instead of producing, import and sell rather than creating an export, and we complain when the economy is not fixed overnight.

There are no quick fixes to the economy. Yes there are a few policies that could be quickly changed, but the outworking of those decisions is going to take a while. It may take a generation to restore and rebuild. The bottom line is we are in it for the long haul. Zimbabwe (or anywhere in the world for that matter) is a marathon not a sprint and your business needs to be prepared to face it.

Marathon running is as much about psychology as it is physical training. You need a focus that will get you through the rough periods. That focus needs to be positive as opposed to negative else it will just reinforce failure. A great place to start is the impact you are having on your community with your product. There is an idea that ‘social entrepreneurs’, those who focus on finding solutions to social, cultural, and environmental problems, are on their own little class of business. I don’t think that this is true. All entrepreneurship solves a problem. That solution will have an impact on society directly or indirectly. Hence I would argue that all entrepreneurs have a social component (or should have). There is a tendency to focus only on the money in business-after all it is a key metric in sustainability and makes investors happy. It is, however, a poor motivator. If you are going through a rough patch there is a good chance that the money (or lack of) is giving you sleepless nights. Look to the impact on lives. Look to the relationships you are building. Look past your selfish profit margins to others. Look for the positive, generate optimism and then go deal with the money.

The long haul needs people. In the short term it is easy to do it on your own, it is easy to burn people with your deals because you never have to deal with them again. The long term needs relationships that you can rely on. The long term needs community. The better we can build a solid, positive community of people around us the better we will last the storm. Community allows money to circulate within it rather than having it externalised. A strong community realises the power and benefits of building something that lasts, even if there are differences of opinion. I sat in two meetings with the same professional grouping over the last month. The first meeting was destructive and confrontational and ended in a walk out. The second was like looking at a different crowd of people; it was positive, the discussion was constructive, differences of opinion were acknowledged and a way forward was reached. The primary difference was that in the month between meetings one member of the community had spent time and effort meeting with individuals and getting them to focus on the benefit to the professional community and their clients rather than just individual members opinions.

Lift up your head and see the long term. Then dig yourself in and prepare for it. Then, with that focus, get on with the daily battles that get you there. Before you know it you will be at the end of the race.