For anyone unfortunate enough to have to listen to me recently, I’ve been trying to lose weight. Too many years with too much food and too little exercise - at 52 years it was time to sort it out. It was in spirit that I found myself in Edinburgh with my Vistage group a few weeks back, attending our team conference day - with the excellent Sports psychologist Simon Hartley - on the 5th floor of the Holiday Inn.

It seemed like a bad business analogy in waiting - take your time and spend good energy taking the stairs or always look for the shortcut and take the lift.

Shortcuts had contributed to my ballooning weight for too long… but was this one bad business metaphor too far?

It was and I’m using it anyway. However, despite the cheesy nature of the analogy, it does hold water if you think about it. Taking the stairs allows you time to consider, to stretch a thought, to spend good energy getting to a place without missing the crucial steps to get there. Even if it takes longer than you thought, you have taken in more on the journey and been in charge of your own progress - you might even meet interesting people along the way.

What of the lift? You get in…wait… and get out. No sense of journey, no effort just the end result and the awkward silence of strangers waiting in the same way. You get where you want to be sure enough (assuming you got out at the right floor) but with no sense of having contributed to be being 5 storeys up nor what you gave up taking the easy route.

How’s that for a business metaphor.

Now for the kicker, some examples that illustrate this:

The quick hit of AI - Rather than the instant gratification of ChatGPT, spend time teaching the bot to think and understand in the way you need it too. Treat it like an assistant hungry for direction and information and build value into your AI processes step-by-step. So less of the scary shiny mannequin face of AI and more of the catchy-catchy robot monkey with some delicious digi-bananas in hand.

The quick hit of decision-making - As a leader, there is a pressure, nay pleasure, at making quick ‘gut-instinct’ decisions. Sometimes to the detriment of something altogether more thoughtful. It’s not that snap decisions don’t have their place - of course they do otherwise we’d never get anything done - but you must be able to see the difference between that and when something that needs more consideration, voices and time to gestate. Even if you have an instant idea of what to do, sometimes spending a little time allowing it to percolate and strengthen is only a benefit. Unless it’s about ‘Christmas Jumpers’, then an immediate decision on a blanket ban is required immediately.

The quick hit of rule-breaking - I’m of the design generation that adored and dared to mimic the likes of David Carson and Tomato. They were breaking all the rules in a new digital design landscape where access to technology made it easier than ever to just make ‘cool stuff’ - more democratic than the stuffy ‘closed door’ generations of workshops and print rooms.  But here’s the thing - you can’t break rules you don’t understand.

The Bauhaus movement notoriously broke convensions by rejecting traditional aesthetics in favour of a more minimalist, functional design that merged art, craft, and technology for mass production - however, it was a rejection built from a base of knowledge and understanding of such current and previous design thinking.

Serving your time learning the craft of your trade, before finding your voice in your own unique way, breaking or changing the rules however you see fit - be it design, music, or just being alive.

There are plenty more of course, these are just some that spring to mind. People, training, long-tail business development, strategy etc. etc. the potential to take the stairs is infinite.

When did last ‘take the stairs’ and why?

— Mark

mark@fortytwo.studio.

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