How Can We Slow This Race Down?

Is it our imagination, or does everything thing seem to be speeding up?

No, it’s not your imagination. It’s real. And the faster the pace, the more stuff comes hurling at us. The more stuff coming at us, the more decisions we must make. And the more decisions we make, the greater the risk that we make a poor decision.

So is there a way out of this conundrum?

Let me share an experience to draw a comparison. I love to ride my motorcycle. To safely ride, I learned I had to force my eyes to look further up the road. The effect is astonishing. When I keep my eyes up, it actually slows everything down.  If I see a problem on the road ahead, I have plenty of time to make the changes needed to safely navigate around it. Thus I can ride both safer AND faster.

Have you ever driven past a picket fence while driving?  If you look at the fence as you’re going by, the pickets seem to blur. But if you look at it further up the road, you can see the individual pickets.

In business, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in day to day activities. Things are moving so fast that everything goes by in a blur. But if we force our vision to look further down the road, we literally slow everything down.

How can we effectively do that? It’s simple (but not easy). We get clear about our destination, and we keep our eyes on it. Of course, we can always count on our friend Murphy (remember Murphy’s Law?) to show up from time to time. But if we keep our eyes upon our destination it slows everything down and we have time to make good tactical adjustments and safely navigate around the daily/weekly challenges that show up.

Do you have a clear destination? Is everyone in the Company bought into it? How often do you evangelize it so it remains a shared priority? Important questions, indeed, the answers of which allow us to travel both safer AND faster on the road to greater success.