Slow and Steady Wins The Race, Fast and Disruptive Takes You Places

From childhood we read stories for various reasons like pictures within the book are great and have an appeal, the story that you are reading is interesting, you like reading and the moral at the end teaches us some life lessons. One such story that we all are aware is the Tortoise and Hare story. This one is Aesop’s Fables creations. Aesop was a slave in ancient Greek and a great story teller, and hence gave the world some interesting and relevant to this era stories to ponder and think about.

The Tortoise and Hare story talks about a race between the fast and the slow, the unequal’s. The Hare used to bully the Tortoise for its shape, size and speed. The tortoise was fed up of this bullying and hence one day challenged the Hare for a race. In this article I have used these two characters      and have tried to apply their story and characteristics to today’s organizational scenario.

Let’s take a look at the characteristics of the Tortoise and Hare. The Tortoise is slow and large while the Hare is fast and nimble. The story drew lot of contradictory morals. For some the moral was “Haste makes waste (Hare)”, “Never be overconfident of your abilities (Hare)”, “Believe in your ability (Tortoise)”  “Perseverance wins at the end (Tortoise)”and some more such morals. But when you apply this story to present day scenarios for businesses it is completely different. To me this story in the present scenario spells out the moral like “Slow and steady definitely wins the race, but fast and disruptive takes you places”

The Tortoise was definitely slow, but he was focused. His focus was to race and reach the finish line not worrying whether he will win or lose but always trying to keep up in the race. Today organizations face the same scenario; they have to constantly keep up to the front runners within view-able distance so that they can catch-up. The Hare on the other hand was fast and focused till a certain point and then was disillusioned that he is already a winner and doesn’t need to worry about the tortoise anymore as his own pace and abilities are getting him the result. This can happen to organizations and can sometimes come in their way as it becomes difficult to move away from adopted practices.

Today there are dual dilemmas, organizations want the focused approach of tortoise of finishing the race and staying relevant by achieving growth and progress and on the other hand run fast (innovate) and be disruptive (bring new things to the table) so that they wouldn’t eventually lose out. Companies need both strategies of the Tortoise and the Hare. Tortoise brings focus and commitment of never giving up while the Hare brings speed and innovation which can be disruptive and essential for the growth engines.

So what do you want to be? The Hare or the Tortoise or both!