47. Lean Forward and Keep Your Head Up

No matter the race… Great leaders anticipate disruptions and chart a smooth course to finish and win!

I’ve been an avid runner for over fifty years. Recently, during a long race, I was leaning forward and running hard, but I was tired, and my gaze was down, my ‘head was not in the run’. I flashed back to some advice from one of my high school coaches, “Keep your head up!”

I remembered that we were coached to focus on three elements: strength, endurance, and strategy.

• Strength — the ability to effectively control your pace, either to increase or decrease, as required by race conditions, i.e., how fast do you need to run in this leg of the race.
• Endurance — the ability to efficiently produce sustained output throughout a race, i.e., how long do you need to run to finish the race.
• Strategy — the plan for robust balancing of strength and endurance over the course of a race, i.e., to not only finish, but to win the race.

As I continued my run, I thought how much running is like software development. Hmmm, check out the connection.

Your team will be filled with strong contributors. They all have the necessary education, training, and experience, and can all lean forward and run hard for extended periods of time. In running a race…