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Focus on the Horizon

Guest post by: Douglas Long

Article Overview: Experiences such as rally car driving can provide pointers that help us in running businesses - especially when we are experiencing difficulties or facing economic uncertainty.

Focus on the Horizon

Very recently I drove a rally car and I have the video to prove it!

For my birthday last year, the family gave me a voucher for a rally car driving experience - drive 2 different cars, each for 8 laps, then do a "hot lap" with an experienced (and in my case, luckily, a very successful) rally car driver. It was great fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I learned quite a bit about handling a car under vastly different conditions from what are experienced in day-to-day road driving.

Lesson 1: focus on the horizon

Many years ago my first driving experiences were on rough roads in country areas and farms. I thought I understood how to control a vehicle on greasy road surfaces. I learned that there is a big difference between driving a car very slowly on mud and gravel when compared with driving it fast. When driving fast I have learned to focus on the horizon, keep the wheels pointed in the direction I want to go, and to be careful not to try and correct too much for all the slipping and sliding that occurs. It is counter-intuitive. The tactic of turning the steering wheel must be subordinated to the strategy of reaching the objective.

Lesson 2: transfer the weight

The cars I drove were either front wheel or all-wheel drives (one of each). I learned that braking hard transferred the weight of the car from the front wheels to the rear wheels and that, if I needed to make a sudden or sharp turn, the best way of doing this was to brake hard, turn the wheels in the direction I wanted to go, then let the car do the work. By braking hard when I came to a turn, letting the car do the work, then accelerating out of the corner I could achieve my objectives while maintaining control.

Lesson 3: listen to the experts

Over the years I've driven a wide range of vehicles (including tractors and ambulances) at just as wide a variety of speeds under almost every possible road condition. I approached this adventure secure in the knowledge that I was a highly experienced driver with a very good record regarding accidents. At the safety briefing all of those doing the course were advised to listen to the instructor who would be sitting beside us on the track. I'm glad I heeded this. My instructor had won a number of international car rallies and could see things I couldn't in regard to my driving. Listening to him enabled me to start slowly then develop to quite fast circuits - and I only spun out twice! Listening to the expert saved me embarrassment and possible injury while simultaneously enabling me to have fun and achieve my objectives.

Seems to me that there's some pointers there for business as well as for life in general.

In his book "Great Powers: America and the World After Bush" (2009, Putnam) Thomas P.M Barnett nominates 10 pointers that can be summarised:

1. Grand strategic vision must combine a clear-eyed view of today's reality with a broad capture of the dominant trends shaping the long term environment
2. Grand strategy does not seek to change human nature but to placate it, thereby ensuring the portability of its strategic concepts among minds from different backgrounds, cultures, and ages
3. Grand strategic thinking always keeps one's role in proper perspective
4. Grand strategic analysis starts with security until its reasonably achieved
5. Grand strategy is not clairvoyance; it does not seek to predict future events. but rather to contextualize them in a confident, opportunistic worldview
6. Because we live in a time of pervasive and persistent revolution, the grand strategist is neither surprised nor dismayed with the awesome force of globalization's tectonic shifts
7. Grand strategy purposefully aspires to be proactive, not merely protecting itself from failure but also exploiting avenues of success as they are revealed
8. Grand strategists do not entertain, much less succumb to, single-point-failure doomsaying because systematic thinking about the future means you're not 'for" or "against" issues but rather accept the implied dynamics of change
9. The grand strategist is therefore interested more in direction than in degree of change
10. The grand strategist desires as many allies as possible and as few enemies as possible

It seems to me that, all too often, we forget the points made by Barnett and we get so bogged down in the "urgent" that we lose sight of the "important". The result is that we fail to move forward as fast as we could (and probably should) - if, indeed, we move forward at all. That's where my rally car driving experience comes in. If I had continued to drive the rally cars in the same way as I normally drive over greasy, uneven roads I would have got stuck and needed a tow wagon to pull me out - slowing right down by focusing totally on the immediate - the urgent - would have meant I got into even more trouble than already existed. Learning how to focus on where I wanted to be and concentrating on that, while shifting the car's weight emphasis and listening to expert advice meant that I never got bogged and, although there were some minor scares, I achieved my objectives safely and successfully.

When I reflect on my business experience in the light of this, it seems to me that my failures have occurred when I lost sight of the horizon - I forgot the points made by Barnett - and I lacked the wisdom and humility to seek help from those wiser than me. My successes have come when I focused on the important, dealt with the urgent, and never forgot where I wanted to go and how I wanted to get there.

Perhaps your business needs a "Grand Strategist" - or, alternatively, a rally car driver!

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Article Tags: Coaching, Focus, Goals, Important versus urgent, Mentoring, Objectives, Strategy, Vision



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