Ever hear of Race Track Leadership (RTL)? Probably not because I just made it up. But don’t tune me out just yet. It’s a pretty cool leadership concept.
A few years ago in a meeting with the executive team of an organization, strategic plans were being made for a new endeavor. As with most new endeavors, nobody knew if the plan would work. The big question in the room was, “How are we going to shift gears if this starts to fail?”
Good question! My suggestion was to think of this like a race car driver. A long time ago I had the fun of being a passenger as a professional driver zipped around a track. The big takeaway for me — besides how absolutely insane these people are — is that they didn’t brake until the absolute last minute. And then they braked HARD.
Think about it — if you’re racing and approach a corner, you want to keep up your speed as long as possible. So you don’t brake until you have to, and that means you have to brake extremely hard before a turn to keep the car under control. You make the turn, then you hit the gas as hard as you can coming out of the turn.
I’m oversimplifying it of course. But you get the idea. And by now I’m sure you can see the parallels to leadership.
Sometimes we have a plan but we know there are going to be curves ahead we don’t expect. More often than not the best thing to do is accelerate into your plan (within reason of course — don’t bet the farm on an unproven idea) but be ready to hit the brakes to handle the turn. Or in business speak, be ready to hit the brakes and pivot.
As I said, my first experience with this was as a passenger. I got no warning about the braking, so I often felt thrown around in the car like a rag doll! Hard to do to a big guy like me. But the corners came so soon, and the braking was so hard, I found myself bouncing all over.
If you lead a team on a new endeavor…um, racetrack…you have to tell everyone that hard braking is likely. You have to give them as much notice as possible. Otherwise they’ll bounce around like I did and be more than happy to bail on you. You’ll lose your team (or make them throw up, which can be just as bad).
So that’s Race Track Leadership. Good luck, and be safe!