“It’s a marathon, not a sprint” Is Wrong.
Part 2-How this looks in the real world
In Part 1 I offered an alternative to thinking about business as a marathon. Here is the gist of it:
It’s true that building a high growth company/business/product/team is not a sprint, but it most definitely is not a marathon either.
It is exponentially longer and more challenging than a marathon.
In my experience working with high growth companies I have found that the effort and cadence is more like running a never ending series of fast 5k’s.
You can read more about that here.
Now I want to talk about what this actually looks like in the real world. This is one of many examples. that I believe really highlights the idea. The company and product is anonymized, but the point still stands.
The Market Lead Company
This was an EdTech product I was consulting on that had been in the market for about 3 years. The 25 person company had a revenue of ~$115M through their consumer channel but had seen an enterprise option present itself repeatedly through the years. More and more schools were buying their product in bulk and distributing to students. If they could shift their sales and product to enter schools through the state level they would be able to impact more students with less operational load. Here they identified a market opportunity that they were not configured for, but if they could adapt their sales process and product to fit this market demand they would see a major revenue boost and be able to own the space. Here is how each mindset would approach this problem, and the outcomes of each approach:
Sprint: “Let’s throw everything into this opportunity because THIS is what will take us over $1B. Pedal to the metal! Lets go!”
Outcome: Team burnout. Complete disorder at the first speedbump. Running full speed toward the wrong finish line, and having nothing left to make it to the correct finish line.
Marathon: “We can slowly work our product into the State process and we will find small incremental gains year over year. Remember y’all, this is a marathon, not a sprint. People who are successful in our space before us are wrong and will die soon”
Outcome: Failure to reach potential. Competed out of the market by a market-lead company who was able to give the State what they needed, when they needed it. A team who is successful at tasks, but not making a product that has a larger impact.
5k: “First thing we need to do is figure out the process and requirements as quickly as possible-that will be hard, but then we can have a down period while we make smart plans for the product and sales team and put them to work simoutaneously. There is going to be some heavy lifting, and a necessity for quick learning, but it will only last a few months and will point us where we need to be heading. We’ll learn along the way and be able to refocus our energy as needed”
Outcome: We not only closed 4 state deals on the first pass, but also learned a ton about the product that helped us improve the product for both consumer and enterprise. On top of that, the team is conditioned to take on periods of intense work in order to acheive a short term goal that supports their long term mission. This work doesn’t come as a surprise and doesn’t derail the company.
On top of that, our team worked their tails off and got somewhere. The sense of pride and accomplishment was tremendous and there was none of that “we launched! It’s all wrong and needs to be reworked-but we launched!” that is so common when less conditioned companies try to take on new ventures.
My absolute favorite part of the 5k mindset is the infinite nature of it. There is always learning and adjusting happening. The only difference is that “failure” does not have a negative connotation in this mindset. Failure is negative for companies who are sprinting or marathoning. For marathon companies, failure becomes something that rots the company from the inside out as there is always some task that is being rewarded while entire products and business units never reach their full potential and decay the backbone of the company.
One last note I want to make: When I say sprint, in no way am I referring to the extremely useful tool, Sprint by Jake and Braden. As a matter of fact, the mindset and methodologies of Sprint fall perfectly in line with the 5k mentality: Bust your ass for a week, learn and observe with the right framework, then bust your ass agian. The principles and methods are sound and it is a great tool for teams to visit. You should give it a chance if you haven’t already. http://www.thesprintbook.com
