It’s a cold, crisp spring morning, and I’m downstairs before my family is up. I’m donning my running shoes and my dog Charlie is sitting eagerly awaiting for me to put on his harness to go for our run.
I’ll admit. I have had a love-hate relationship with running.
I used to think I had to do everything in extreme. I wasn’t a runner unless I was training for something– a marathon or a half marathon, you know, something “big.” Running was a thing to do but I never loved it– it was more about checking some items off my life’s bucket list.
However that changed in the last two years. I have finally come to the conclusion that running is good for my soul and I don’t have to train for something big to be a runner.
There are days I’m out for an hour and there are days I run for 15 minutes and call it a day. I am embarrassingly slow, but I’m still considering myself a runner.
A year and a half ago I found a trail nearby that is rarely used. Charlie can run off leash and explore and I can just think, while casually watching my footing to avoid rocks and roots.
Am I fast? No.
Am I graceful? Most definitely not.
But it doesn’t matter.
The woods is where I go to think.
Most mornings it’s just the woods, me, and Charlie.
…And a ton of metaphors.
Like this weekend, when there was a group of volunteers working on “my” trail, I decided to take my normal route in reverse to give them space.
I’ve run this trail many, many times over the past year and a half, always in the same direction. I have my routine. I know where the uneven parts are and how to keep Charlie out of the mud. (What is it with white dogs and mud??!?!?!)
But running the trail in reverse was so disorienting to me.
It was like I was running a brand new trail.
I was unsure of my footing.
I tripped a few times and almost face-planted once.
There seemed to be so many more rocks and roots that I hadn’t seen before.
I had to look for the trail markers, and I missed a turn.
This trail, which I was so intimately familiar with, all of a sudden became foreign– and a lot more challenging– for me.
But I also saw the trail differently, noticing how the light filtered through trees and how the path had elevations I never noticed before. When I finished running I couldn’t believe what a difference running in reverse had made and how I felt like I had run a totally new trail.
And then the metaphors and lessons came pouring as they always do (along with the endorphins!) at the end of all my trail runs…
THE BOTTOM LINE
It got me thinking of our many routines in business: standard operating procedures, marketing plans, financial closings with standard reporting.
They all serve us well– they provide scalability, consistency and efficiencies. They are often “proven.”
But what if we took them in reverse– mixed up the way we do things, customized, personalized and turned the “tried and true” on it’s head?
Just once… Or maybe more than once?
We might, with our new perspective, find
A new market
A new customer
A new, more meaningful metric
A new way to earn more profits
A new path we didn’t know about before…
What if you took your processes and ran them in reverse: rethinking them from the customer’s perspective, from your strategic partner’s perspective or from the prospect’s point of view?
That little change of course on my morning run had me rethinking many of my routines that day, and how I approach work, how I approach my kids, and gave me a new commitment to trying to do things differently.
So how are you going to run things in reverse?
Have you up-ended a tried and true process and found something new?
Let me know in the comments.
Until then, I’ll be on the trails, running slow, and trying to keep Charlie out of the mud.
Would you like help rethinking your processes? Reach out for a complimentary brainstorming session.
