LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

I’m not a big car guy, but a couple of years ago I had the opportunity to take part in the Porsche Driving Experience at Barber Motor Speedway.  Over the two-day intense course, I went from thinking I knew how to drive to being deathly afraid to go over 40 MPH, all of which culminated in approaching hairpin turns at 120 MPH and wanting more!  While it was an incredible experience that changed the way I think about automobiles, it also taught me some important leadership lessons about rapid progress and avoiding Scale-ure.

I strolled into Birmingham having no idea what to expect, but was confident that whatever it was, I could handle it. After all, I had been driving for more than 25 years, how much different could if be?  Oh, and I definitely wouldn’t need the Dramamine everyone kept talking about.

We grabbed a big breakfast, and it was off to the classroom.  I fully anticipated we were going to talk about the precision manufacturing of these luxury racing vehicles, basically a live Porsche infomercial.  Instead, we got physics lesson.  We learned how tires are designed to stay flat on the road, how the use of the brakes helps balance the G forces on those tires while driving, dictating speed and direction.  We learned about hitting the apex of turns so you could drive straighter longer (which equals faster).  As a matter of fact, the only time we talked about using the accelerator was when we talked about when and how to back off the gas pedal to better manage upcoming turns in the road. 

Once we left the classroom, we spent the next four hours on the practice pads. All the drills were centered around mastering two skills: brake usage and course vision. 

If they said these things once, they said them 1000 times: “The key to going fast is learning how to use the brakes!” and “Where you look is where you will go.”

It was my turn up on the first course.  The cones were set up in a figure-eight pattern featuring two long straightaways and two giant half-moon turns. The course was marked with signs on where to apply the brakes at critical points in the drive.  Like every other testosterone-infused adrenaline junkie that went before me, I strapped into the Porsche Boxster, got the “GO” sign, and floored it down the first straightaway blowing right through the first brake sign and into the half-moon turn. 

That’s when I wished I had listened to the instructor!

What started as a screaming tear down the straightaway turned into almost a dead standstill.  I was doing everything I could to keep the car inside the cones.  The momentum I had built up on the easy part of the course was too much for me to handle without coming to virtually a complete stop.  And my eyes, well they were dead set on the cones directly in front of me…I had no idea what was around the bend.

OK, my guess is you are already starting to draw some of your own conclusions about the business lessons I learned from this experience…and you’re probably right.  But let me try to summarize the most important ones.

The first, and maybe the hardest lesson I learned was that I was capable of more than I imagined, but I wasn’t as good as I thought I was.  I had the privilege of having a dozen instructors who dedicated their lives to the sport of auto racing giving me sage advice on how to approach this new challenge and I chose to jump in the car and lean on my own knowledge and experience.  How often do we do this when trying to scale our businesses? 

There are books, advisors, employees, friends, and consultants from whom we can gather insights (and who would be happy to give them). We may have even taken one of their classes.  But, the first chance we have to put that advice to use, we say “I got this” and ignore everything we heard.  We are proud of ourselves and everything seems to be going well until we hit that first turn,  lose control, and can’t see what’s around bend.

Next, in order to go faster you have to learn to master the brakes.  Brakes aren’t just used to avoid a crash, they are used to control the momentum of the car, enabling you to effectively navigate twists and turns.  While your organization doesn’t have a physical brake pedal, you make those adjustments through your decision making, specifically the things you say “no” to.  When your business is speeding down the straightaway you are often only thinking about capitalizing on that momentum.  You use your high-water mark for planning and ignore the signs telling you to slow down because there is a curve coming up ahead.  It’s pedal to the metal until you hit the corner; then it’s slam on the brakes or hit the wall.  Saying “no” or “not now” to good things and recognizing the warning signs will enable you to recognize the benefits of the best things and manage the curves when they come.

Finally, reorienting your line of sight will determine the direction of your organization because “Where you look is where you will go”.  One of the hardest drills to master (at least for me) was on the splash pad, a specially coated section of blacktop that is sprayed with water to be ten times slicker than ice.  The goal here was to drive in a circle and keep the car from spinning out.  As you start out, the natural reaction when the car starts to spin is to look toward the slide to see what you are sliding into.  Unfortunately, all that does is prolong the slide because your brain gives your body the wrong cues to correct course.  And if that happens off the splash pad and during the race, the wall comes faster and you hit harder!

Even if you are not in jeopardy of spinning out, shifting your gaze to look further down the track allows you to hit your marks, recognize hazards earlier, and follow the curves in the road more effectively. Reorienting your line of sight as a business leader is not different.  Small, early adjustments allow you to capitalize on opportunities and avoid potential hazards while smoothing out the twists and turns.