How fast do you pee?
There is a memorable line in Ashlee Vance’s biography, “Elon Musk”, in which a former colleague of Elon’s claimed that Elon is in such a rush to achieve the big goals he has set that “he even pees fast!”.
One of my client’s offices is over three floors and the person that gets up and down the stairs fastest is the MD – and by a long shot. All day he runs up and down the stairs. The pace of his legs going up and down the stairs is like a metronome of how quickly things get done in his business.
These two anecdotes are an indicator of the pace of thought and action of both of those business leaders and in turn the culture they create in their businesses.
A culture of pace.
As a result, those businesses get more done in less time and grow faster than their competitors.
At the other end of the spectrum, I watched a group of workmen earlier this year compete for the Guinness World Record for the slowest creation of a pelican crossing outside my son’s school. There were supervisors to supervise workmen who in turn were all standing around staring at the job and achieving very little. It took them over two months to complete the job. Progress from one week to the next was pedestrian (no pun intended).
Speaker and author T Harve Ecker frequently uses the maxim ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’.
As I work with businesses to help accelerate growth I am on the lookout for the clues in a business that are indicative of the pace of that business.
Think about your own business. How quickly do you and your managers go from decision to action? How quick and efficient are your meetings? How quickly do you expect or tolerate things to be implemented?
To increase the pace of your business, shorten your meetings, raise your expectations of your team’s ability to get things done quickly and reward the behaviour you are looking for. I am making the assumption here that results can be achieved more quickly without compromising quality.
Of course, there are limits to this, but, everyone could work at least 10% faster without a loss in quality.
In order for your managers and future leaders to think and act quickly, first they need to know what they are doing. I have two stalwart DVD training products “The Business Accelerator” and “The Strategy Compass” which combined provide about 8 hours of first class content to equip the rising stars of your organisation to grow your business. They normally sell for £97 and £197 +VAT respectively but I am running a summer offer until 1st September:
Both for just £97 +VAT.
Click this link to find out more about how these two programmes can help the people in your business deliver an even better return for you in less time.
