Baby, We Were Born To Run

Born To Run 

In his book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the Greatest Race the World Has Ever Seen, author Christopher McDougall reminds us of the often photocopied quote stuck on office fridges everywhere, “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.”

The quote is also often attributed to Thomas Friedman who helped to popularize the proverb about the lion and the gazelle by including it in his 2005 bestseller The World is Flat. Friedman has been quoted as saying that a sign written in Mandarin on the factory floor of an auto parts manufacturer in China recounted the tale. The quotation was disseminated via multiple avenues including his book and a motivational poster with the title “The Essence of Survival” that reprinted the text. The earliest instance located by Quote Investigator appeared in a 1985 The Economistmagazine article titled “Lions or Gazelles?” where the words were credited to a securities analyst named Dan Montano.

Regardless who coined the phrase or penned the proverb, it’s a profound tale of the drive we wake up with and the action we take, as managers. Even in new-normal, not so normal, abnormal times. We have this drive as people. As businesspeople. As fierce, spirit of the lion, bad ass, checking off tasks, business people.

How is a shark like a lion? How is a bird like a dog? Most animals are hunters, movers. Gotta keep movin'. Can't stay still. It's an "eat-what-you-kill" world we live in, and Covid-19 has grounded our flights, parked us, idled us and flipped us into a Zoom-fueled haze. Making it hard to run. Run? Really? Where are you going? The kitchen for another coffee or some Keebler Elfwiches? (Even they don't want to be stuck in the tree baking cookies.)

We all hope for the return to the wide open plains, where we can run. Where we can hunt and gather. We'll gladly give back the ergonomic chair and the coffee mug for a rental car and some Starbucks to go. Although we constantly may find ourselves in conference call torture, or video call purgatory, we will get out of the 19th Circle of Covid hell. We will.

Like McDougall's book, Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 masterpiece “Born to Run,” has a few choice lines that apply as equally to the raw rebellion of 1975, as to the rapid, technology-fueled world of "WFH," allowances for standing desks and upgraded chairs, startups, risk and reward, and constant change we live in four decades later as business professionals.

• “In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines Sprung from cages on Highway 9, chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, and stepping out over the line." That sounds so much more exciting than "in the heat of the night, I took the wheel of my car and drove off into the dark night, to Target, and wore my mask and gloves, made sure my cart was sanitized, and spent an hour wiping down groceries." Riveting.
• “Together we could break this trap, we'll run till we drop, baby we'll never go back; Whoah, will you walk with me out on the wire 'Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely rider but I gotta know how it feels.” Yes. Gotta know how it feels to walk through airport security and get my forehead shot like Laser Tag 2000 so I can pass the temperature-take-test.
• “The amusement park rises bold and stark." I think the park is closed. And the movie theater. And the bank. And the...yup, lots of stuff canceled. Including lots of common sense and decency. Yup, canceled. Although this year has been more like the roller coaster, the FreeFall, and the Scrambler, than the tea cups or the low impact bumper cars.
• “We're gonna get to that place where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun But till then tramps like us, baby we were born to run”  How about getting on a plane and getting reacquainted with the irrational fear of flying and not the fear of inhaling a deadly virus. Ahh, the good old days. I hope that virus knows not to skip one seat over and get me.

Business professionals are we. We are not bureaucrats. We are not still. We need real interaction with real people. We need to end this Second Life Sims game of Covidopoly and get around the board and pass go.

We wake up in the morning and our choice of “suicide machines” might have previously been be anything from a 60's "suicide door" Lincoln Continental 4-door convertible (now those were cool, Matthew McConaghey, not your beige SUV), a Harley, a Prius or a pickup, a Dodge Challenger Hellcat. Hell, a Ferrari. Nope, a suicide machine is now a Keurig out of K-Cups, a printer out of toner, a toilet paper dispenser without paper, or a MacBook that can't connect to wifi, a broken door lock that enables someone's kids to bust into mom or dad's office to photobomb the video call.

The mechanical rebellion of gas and tires and oil and fumes inferred by Springsteen hints of the extent to which we are bound to our devices of mobility. Someone say something about mobility? Whether it’s wearing low profile tires or an OtterBox, our tools take us away, with the speed and fury of chasing dreams, or at least trying to keep up with Salesforce.com. It may smell like French Roast or burning Pirellis. Or toner baking on Staples 8 1/2 x 11 white bond. Don't even get me going about when Netflix can't connect or Amazon Prime gives you that spinning white arrow wheel thingy.

We may long for the days of breathing in LA rush hour smog, sliding through Boston or Chicago slush, or sucking in the toxic air on the subway underneath Manhattan. We may long to cram ourselves in coach and welcome the follow up chiropractor visits (hard to crack a neck "virtually."). We miss those Southwest Peanuts. We miss those bad hotel breakfasts that weren't an apple and a granola bar in a bag.

We sell, share, communicate, pitch. We meet and conference call. Now, all through a monitor. We've somehow become trapped inside the episode of The Jetsons meet the Flintstones. George is staring into his computer thinking he'd rather be Fred running the dinosaur at the quarry. Fresh air, no monitor to stare into. No reports.

Business people aren't at-home bureaucrats. We weren’t born for the drone of "you're on Mute Bob! Can you hear me? I can't hear you. Nancy, we hear you but we can't see you." It's become the tired virtual workplace equivalent of Fonzie jumping the shark, Greg Brady finding the cursed tiki or the Super Bowl Whassup ad campaign.

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it puts its mask on. It knows it must be the first gazelle to get the lion a proposal after their Zoom meeting. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up, hopes it didn't run out of K-Cups. It knows it must sanitize its cart and get to Costco early, or it will not have enough toilet paper or toner cartridges. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be Zooming. And you better have enough coffee, toner, and TP."

We miss the silliness of office politics, the whiteboard, the thrill of getting the parking space, the thrill of EZ passing your way through the expressway tollbooth or the mask-free enunciation of an accurate order at the drive through window. (I said no onions!) It's not their fault but every server, service employee, every customer properly donning a mask sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher. We weren’t trading dreams for stability. We weren’t meant to hide in caves, but rather to sprint down the Serengeti or speed down Woodward Avenue or Wilshire Boulevard.

For us, security is folly. Stillness is wasteful. We create, we bend, we flex, we push, we innovate, we motivate, we mentor, we win, we celebrate, but we never stop running. We research, develop, market, brand, test, launch, LEAN, lean-in, turnaround, restructure, engineer and reengineer. We normally board planes, we stuff luggage, we ‘Uber, we produce, we generate, we schedule. Yes, we even "touch base," "circle back," and revel in "moving Ted and Joan to BCC."

Productivity and results are not what we do but who we are. Work should be where we are, close with colleagues, close with customers, not marginalized like a commentator from Wide World of Sports. Five O’Clock is a brand of coffee and a shadow, and not a hard stop. Bruce, the Boss, would say, we are the Boss of ourselves. Or at least we hope to return to be the boss of ourselves.

“Nobody wins unless everybody wins.” - Bruce Springsteen

Ok, enough of the new normal, we've pivoted enough. Let's get back to dynamic, collaborative, interpersonal, physically present initiatives to transform businesses and make changes and strive to leave things better than we found them and believe in the power of teamwork.

"In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream

At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines...

It's more like this:

In the day we sweat it out in an ergonomic chair for a faraway American dream

At night we're stuck in mansions of glory loading toner cartridges in suicide machines"

As you’re running, celebrate your team, look away from the gazelles you’re chasing and see the other lions in your pride running beside you. It’s not the destination, so much as the journey, We want to walk out on the wire because we know eventually, we will walk in the sun.

We will run. Gloveless. Purell-less. Maskless. Zoomless. Pivotless.

We are business people. We are professionals.

We are not content to walk in the sun, but, rather, we will soon again run in the sun.

There's a reassuring bellowing from the heavens that sounds less like Springsteen and more like the great James Earl Jones, in his best Lion King Mufasa voice, and it sounds fatherly, regal, equal parts fear and love: Very soonnnn, You will runnn in the sunnn, my sonnn.

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Copyright 2020, Paul Fioravanti, MBA, MPA and Qorval Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.