If you want to be better and faster, sometimes you need to STOP.

Today is the day – the day you’ve been working toward. For the past ten months, you’ve been waking up at 5AM, five days a week, to run. At first, you were only running a couple of miles, and, let’s face it, you were pretty slow. But you were committed. You ate the right foods, overcame your vices, and supplemented your runs with regular strength training. You also surrounded yourself with a support network made up of friends, family, and other runners. And, now the day has arrived, and you are ready for your first marathon.

You stand at the starting line, waiting for the gun. You wave to your coach, standing off to the side cheering you on. You both know how far you’ve come and are confident that this will be your best run yet. You’ve put in the work, have a strategy, and, most importantly, you are wearing your lucky shorts. They were your dad’s. He wore them in every race he ever ran, and you’ve worn them in every race you’ve run. They’re a little worn out, and definitely not the best technology, but it’s tradition.

The starting gun fires, and you’re off. Your stride is good; your breathing is even; and you’re pacing yourself nicely. The first few miles go pretty well. Heck, you’ve done this a million times! Around mile four, though, things start feeling a little off. It’s a hot sweaty day, and you’re just not feeling comfortable. Wait a minute, it’s the shorts! They’re slipping down… and riding up… and (what the?!) chaffing! AHHH! You still have twenty-two miles to go! What are you going to do?

Fortunately, your coach sees what’s going on, at mile marker 4, and signals that he’s off to get you a better pair. He’ll see you at mile marker 6. Hang in there!

As you approach mile marker 6, you see your coach standing there, as promised, holding a new, high tech pair of running shorts. (You gotta love that guy!) You grab the shorts on the way past. Now what? You’ve already lost too much time, so you can’t possibly stop. You’ll just have to change them on the fly. (Yeah, it’s a little weird, but running 26 miles is a little weird, too, if you think about it.) Hopping down the road, you get one foot out of the “lucky” shorts and almost into the new shorts. You’re slowing down even more and you almost fall. Suddenly, it occurs to you, “How do I know that these new shorts are actually better? I could speed up right now, if I just give up on the new shorts and put the old ones back on.” And that’s what you do. You struggle through the last twenty miles, and you cross the finish line. It wasn’t close to your best time, but you finished, and that’s what’s important, right?

But, what would have happened if you had just stopped to change the shorts? If your uncomfortable shorts cost you just one minute per mile, after mile 6, that’s twenty minutes. Stopping to change your shorts may have taken one minute, at worst. That’s a nineteen minute net gain, if you had just STOPPED.

Similar situations play out, every day, in our professional lives. How many times in a year does your company attempt to implement a new process, form, or protocol to counteract challenges to productivity? And how many of those endeavors shrivel on the vine, because they are too cumbersome or complicated, or because there just isn’t buy-in? What are we doing wrong?

Very often, we believe we can make sweeping changes and improvements in the regular course of business. When we don’t pause for training, facility rearrangement, or to just give the team time to get used to new ideas, we are setting ourselves up to fail. It’s difficult to create new habits. It’s even harder when everything else is the same as it’s always been. Commitment, which is vital to the success of any new undertaking, never develops; skepticism and resentment toward the new way of doing things builds; and, eventually, the new program is abandoned for expediency.

In construction, we often have the opportunity to pilot a new initiative – say Lean Construction – at the commencement of a new project. In these situations, we have the luxury of time to plan, learn, and organize before activities ever begin on site. But, what if you’re halfway through a project when you realize something major needs to change, or you’re trying to introduce a new initiative at the corporate level? That’s when you have to make the tough decision to hit the PAUSE button to make sure the new program is given every chance to succeed. That decision can only be made when there is true commitment to the path ahead, and belief that the new way is the better way. If the commitment isn’t there, all of your efforts will ultimately be wasted when the new undertaking is abandoned. Further, future attempts to adopt new ways of doing things will suffer based on these unsuccessful experiences.

I’m not writing any of this because I think it’s easy. It is very difficult, in the midst of deadlines and customer demands, to believe that stopping to regroup is the best course of action. It’s even harder to convince your entire team that this is the way to go. But I encourage you to make the effort. You’ve found something that can improve productivity, reduce waste, provide more value, grow your people, or build your reputation. Isn’t it worth taking the time necessary to make it a success?

Remember, improving your business isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon!

 Julie Glassmeyer is the Owner of Glassmeyer Construction Consulting & Coaching, LLC (G3C). Julie applies her 21 years of commercial construction management and planning experience to support individuals and organizations in their efforts to reach the next level of performance excellence. G3C, LLC, specializes in Lean Construction, Construction Safety, Leadership Training & Mentoring, Owner Guidance & Mentoring, and Professional Writing. For more information, please visit www.glassmeyerconsulting.com, or contact Julie at [email protected] or 513.635.2730.