The world has always been one of changes. But as technology evolves and speeds up our lives, something about the changes we face is different. It is a more extreme shift, more rapid and complex, and the challenges are more difficult. To cope with this, entrepreneurs have to work harder and faster. Considered virtues, we even select leaders based on these qualities.
In working with top teams and intra/entrepreneurs, we conclude that just speeding up isn’t the answer. We find that if these top teams slow down, they eventually go deeper into the achievement of their objectives. They’ll even do it faster !
We believe that, if teams decided from time to time to free their body’s energy, re-use their minds, liberate themselves from all the stress and the negative energy, they can be a lot more efficient.
In a study of the Harvard Business Review on 343 businesses, the companies that embraced initiatives and chose to “go, go, go” to try to gain an edge ended up with lower sales and operating profits. So, paradoxically, you should try slowing down to speed up.
Those who paused at key moments to make sure they were on the right track, the firms that “slowed down to speed up” improved their top and bottom lines, averaging 40% higher sales and 52% higher operating profits over a three years period.
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It’s also ironic that often entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who seek to create startups or to achieve goals have the most unsustainable live. They are sacrificing their finances, their families, their friends and sometimes even their health.
But it has some logic… Today’s businesses are still too often managed based on the « Newtonian world » view. Therefore, leaders don't pay enough attention to the wellbeing at work; they don't take into account that if they were taking more time to re-focus on the big picture, they’ll be able to achieve more and faster.
Up to this point, Newtonian logic which is based in reductionism, determinism, materialism, and a reflection-correspondence view of knowledge. Although it is simple, coherent and intuitive, it ignores or denies human agency, values, creativity and evolution. Is perfectly consistent and simplistic in retrospect.
The meaning of a challenge is not to be focused on it working 20hours a day. How can someone be efficient if he is only focusing on work at such?
When an entrepreneur is too busy, he might get nervous and stressed. Then there is a possibility that he starts working in the wrong direction wasting his time and not reaching the objectives he had initially in mind.
Can you really « think » when you work a whole week 8+ hours a day. Possible but not easy.
Excuses? Here are a few!
“We don’t have time...”
“I’ll do it tomorrow”
“How can I speed up my business if I am slowing down myself?”
“In the evening, I have my kids and my wife, I already don’t have time for them, when can I schedule these kind of activities?”
Sounds familiar? Often it does but if it doesn’t, we are super happy for you!
The reason why we created DCamp, Deceleration Camps, is that we consider entrepreneurs and their teams as business athletes and our aim is to increase their performances by enabling them to take a break from their daily (crazy) business life.
Do you think athletes are on the field 24/7 and that they deliver performance with broken spirit? For an entrepreneur, it’s just the opposite… Free your body, throw away stress and negative thoughts, give your body the opportunity to “THINK” and focus on the adequate priorities.
We have our own methodology and framework made with former athletes, performance coaches and business coaches - I am myself an innovation & startup coach helping companies/teams/entrepreneurs disrupt the market.
Whether the methodology will be to slow down by boosting the body’s energy in an intense physical exercise session or by focusing on the mind with a yoga moment, we believe that too reach further you shouldn’t neglect these aspects. It’s even more important as a team: Temporise and do the right thing at the right moment.
And by the way It’s not a problem to look back to see the big picture: doing it is actually one of the first steps forward!
That’s why we help and coach entrepreneurs and teams to decelerate to accelerate again and better.
