The-Slight-Edge

128 The Slight Edge
Harness the Power of Momentum
Who won the race—the tortoise or the hare? We all know the answer to that
one. Yet we live in a world where most everyone has come to expect instant this
and instant that, and if we don’t get the results we’re after fast and faster, we quit.
Get rich quick. The fast lane. That fellow standing in front of the microwave
muttering, “Hurry uppp, hurry uppp ... ” Fast, faster, fastest is a strategy that
will eventually take you down the Slight Edge curve.
M.I.T. professor Peter Senge puts this beautifully in his best-selling business
book, The Fifth Discipline—The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization:
Virtually all natural systems, from ecosystems to
animals to organizations, have intrinsically optimal
rates of growth. The optimal rate is far less than
the fastest possible growth. When growth becomes
excessive—as it does in cancer—the system itself
will seek to compensate by slowing down; perhaps
putting the organization’s survival at risk in the
process.
— Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline
Have you ever witnessed something or someone that grew too fast? A
business that expanded too rapidly and then self-destructed? A rock star, movie
star or sports star who became a shooting star and went BOA—Burned Out on
Arrival? Faster can end up being slower; too fast often puts the system’s (or the
person’s) survival at risk.
Dr. Senge talks about “intrinsically optimal rates of growth”; your
optimal rate of growth is always served best by a
step-by-step approach of constant, never-ending
improvement, which lays solid foundations and
builds upon them over and over. The Slight Edge is your
optimal rate of growth. Simple disciplines compounded over time. That’s how
the tortoise won; that’s how you get to be a winner, too.
Having said that let me ask this: What is the real point of the story of the
tortoise and the hare? Altogether now: Slow and steady wins the race, right? But
notice something here: the point is not that there’s any special virtue to moving
slowly. There’s nothing inherently good about slowness, and it’s just as possible
to move too slowly as to move too quickly.
The key word in the Aesop moral is not “slow”—it’s steady.
Steady wins the race. That’s the truth of it.