The Groove

I never considered myself a runner, or any sort of sportsman for that matter. It wasn't until I was within spitting distance of 40, at the end of my MBA and with years of hotel living hanging around my middle that I started to take running as a pastime seriously. Yes, I played squash and I cycled to a few jobs, I even swam some lunchtimes but running was something that quickly hurt, but had the allure of being easy to do anywhere. When I worked in Dallas, I had laughed at the people that power-walked around the building and jogging never quite did it for me. So one crisp March evening I decided to start running. I put together a scary PE outfit and set off. The first few runs were painful. I considered getting to the end of the road without my lungs bursting a major achievement; then as far as the post-box. These are not marathon distances, but slowly, over weeks, I built up the time I ran. After a month or so, I was able to run a mile, which took me to the Princes Theatre and back. At that point half marathons or even 10k runs* still seemed a very long way off, then, when I reached the 2 mile point something wonderful happened. I found the groove. The groove is where you stop thinking about what you are doing and can let your mind drift while your body gets on with it. I had a similar type of experience with meditation, where having almost got the trick of letting go of your thoughts you begin to experience a wonderful calm. Once you can run for 20-30 minutes without your lungs exploding you are fit enough to run almost any distance you care to try. Once I reached this point I ran several half marathons, 10k's and even the evil Aldershot Grim. Once in the groove, I found it possible to enjoy the countryside I was running in, appreciate the weather and actually give some thought to important stuff. Even when I eased back on the running and started swimming, instead I found it was still possible to get into the groove and often do my best thinking pounding up and down the lanes of the local rec.

Oddly, this is something that many of the businesses I work with don't take seriously. Thinking about business issues, they say, is something that happens in the office in a serious business environment, by managers paid to do just that. It doesn't; what it requires is an environment that encourages creative thought, builds on analysis, seeks input, links opinion, rejects nothing and challenges everything. This rarely happens in most organisations and is reflected in the quality of the decisions made as a consequence. I’m not suggesting holding board meetings at the pool or at the track. The point of the groove is that it happens when the mind is not being distracted by the pain or effort being experienced by the body. In this sense, the thinking part of a business should occasionally be put into an environment where it is able to work unfettered by the politics, hierarchies, pressures or distractions of a normal day.

Next time you have a serious business issue that you think might benefit from being exercised give me a call and let’s try and get the thinking part of your company into a groove.

*This has nothing to do with this blog, but I find being English and my relationship with units of measurement quite odd. I can visualise a mile (a 10 minute run), I know what a stone and an ounce look like. 1.6Km, 6.35kg and 28.35g are alien quantities. Temperature though is different. A hot day; it must be in the 80's or 90's. A cold day; that's 1 or 2 degrees. Even the government suffers from this. Why force businesses to work in Kg when all the road signs and speed limits are in miles. A New Zealander I know believes that this is concrete proof of English woolly thinking.