Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed.
Every morning, a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter if you are a lion or a gazelle … When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.
— African proverb; recently popularized by Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat.
Apologies for the pretty grim imagery, and the stress of the moment. Especially for you high-empathy readers out there. But there’s a lesson here that bears noting.
We need to be continuously improving.
Sometimes, just to survive.
You think this is overly dramatic?
Globalization has pitted companies across oceans as direct competitors.
Megastores have threatened the local mom-and-pops storefronts.
A crowded job market provides fierce competition for those looking to land a job. It also provides a plentiful supply of talent to companies wanting to upgrade …
We are all feeling the stress. The hunted, and the hunters.
And even the observers; in such a fast, competitive, on edge world, can children sense the stress of mom and dad after a day of running at work? Do you think grandparents worry about their children, and their grandchildren?
While not everyone is running the race, everyone is affected by it.
I think there is only one thing to be done about it.
I know we often bemoan the pace, the always-on always-connected present state of affairs … and I know we often wish for a return to a slower time. If only we could go to sleep and wake up to yesterday’s pace.
The reality — one that we need to come to terms with — is that we need to wake up and work on our ability to run without the stress.
Learning is now a survivor skill like never before.
I need to learn how to get proficient and comfortable with mobile technologies. She needs to learn how to be more influential with her public speaking. He needs to learn how to be more collaborative. They need to learn how to embrace change.
And on and on.
For it’s a jungle out there. Whether you are running to get, or running to get away … make no mistake that you need to get better.
For you very well may be running for your livelihood.
(And you may not want to wait until the sun comes up. The early bird gets the worm!)
johnponders 
Thanks for the post John!!
Not sure if it is a myth or not but I heard a national speaker claim this – he stated that a congressional report from the 50s or 60s (cannot remember what year) indicated that a major threat to the citizens of the U.S. would be boredom. This was a conclusion at the time because of the rapid pace of productivity – it was though this would lead to too much free time and consequently boredom.
In way to many respects that is obviously wrong but think about it another way – are we literally entertaining ourselves to death? There are so many things we can be doing but what are the real meaningful, essential and important ones? How many times do we catch ourselves engaged in meaningless and mindless things (a few come to mind Jersey Shore, surfing the internet for hours, etc.) – way too many options to fill our time – we can even take ‘good’ things and just pile them on top of a way to busy schedule. Yes, it seems we tend to cram way too many things in and consequently leave no margin. Boredom – ha!!
So yes, let’s run the race but remember even the most fit athlete can sprint just so long. Boy, I am tired.
Hey Larry, wow; good stuff! That boredom idea is just counterintuitive enough to demand consideration … but the sentiment in your second paragraph is what really hits home. Gives me pause. These days I have little margin, as you call it.
You mean I can’t aspire to be Forrest Gump and just keep runnin’ and runnin’ and … 🙂
John,
Good thoughts, definitely. I completely agree with continuous improvement. Whether professionally or personally, the day I stop learning is the day I stop growing, and I hope that day will only come when I stop breathing.
However, when I think about continuous improvement, I don’t like to think about it in terms of outrunning the competition in order to survive (as either the gazelle or the lion)…it puts the focus in the wrong place.
My professional focus is on my customers…what can I do to better serve their needs? My personal focus is on God and those around me…what can I do to better serve them?
No one wants to be a customer because my company is winning the race against the competition…they want to be a customer because we serve their needs well! And I can only do that by focusing on and listening to the customer, not the competition.
Larry B rightfully cautions about the tremendous variety of distractions our modern world offers. The competitive landscape offers the same–there’s always someone doing something innovative that threatens my business. There are people going in new directions in every industry…directions I would have never thought of going. But my greatest mistake is to focus on whether I should be countering what others are doing; whether I’m falling behind. It distracts me from my focus. It distracts me from the customer and what she says she needs.
The world is full of stressed out business leaders trying to beat the competition. The world is short of leaders hell-bent on serving the customer. And this is what I can’t figure out…only the customer decides who wins, so why would we focus on anything else?
Serve the customer, and we will continuously improve.
Serve the customer, and we will survive.
Interesting, Stephen. You pose a different angle. Although I’m not entirely tracking with you.
Customers are customers because they are being served, until they are not. Companies outrun the competition because they are doing a better job at sustainably serving their customers. So I’m not sure the metaphor misdirects the focus.
Focusing on customer needs and wants is a necessary but not sufficient condition to competitive survival. It clearly is necessary; on that I’m sure we can agree.
But there is a whole lot more when it comes to sustainability.
As you focus on the customer, you create an internal demand within the organization to deliver. The systems and processes within the organization that must operate in sync to serve customers must be part of the equation…
And you might think it heresy, but, there are times that internal systems and processes must govern what promises are made to customers. If they are not in balance, there is not sustainability, and the customer and the organization will suffer.
If that balance is achieved by consistently falling short of filling customer needs, then most certainly the competitor/lion will catch our company/gazelle.
But, with continuous improvement (in terms of organizational capabilities) the company/gazelle can continue to outrun its competitor/lion, and live to serve another day. And another customer …
Thanks for commenting and deepening the dialogue!
I’ve heard Dave Ramsey use a similar logic to urge his listeners to get gazelle intense about their finances to dig themselves out of debt. I guess the same would apply here. Whether the lion or the gazelle, we must stay gazelle intense if we hope to live to serve anothe day. 🙂
I was one of the last ones to get a cell phone and I am definitely the last one to get Facebook or Twitter (still have neither). It took me forever to learn what exactly a “blog” is but now I read them and write blogs every day. I think I have “come to terms with it” as you say and learning is definitely a “survivor skill”. 100% accurate post!
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Great piece! The basis for how I can continue to kick it among the young techies today. Always learning… and usually kicking their butt. If I may get Shaolin for a moment… “the way moves”. And the key, as you put simply… “our ability to run without the stress”.
Fight or flight… is still within us. And it’s constantly evolving.
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