The New Nimble

CHAPTER 7Keep It Moving

Good things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

—Abraham Lincoln

If you're not five minutes early, you're late.

—Robert Tracy – Co-Founder of Dot Foods, Inc.

Patience is a virtue. Patience helps us remain calm and reflects an inner peace and humility with our circumstances. It serves us well when things are not within our control. As discussed in Chapter 3, as leaders, we need to distinguish between those things we can control and those we cannot. While we can remain patient about those we cannot control, we need to be ready to take decisive action around those elements where we can have impact. We need to move quickly and take advantage of them efficiently. Being able to pivot when needed requires having the right relationships in place, confidence in the information coming in, and the bravery to be decisive.

PROFILE: DOT FOODS, INC. (SUPPLY CHAIN) – DELIVERING IN A CRISIS

As you're reading this, you're conscious of absorbing the content, but you're not thinking about flexing your eye muscles to move across the line or contracting your pupils to focus. You feel your chest expand as you breath in, but you can't feel the air move through the walls of your lungs to oxygenate your blood. You're conscious of your mind processing ideas, but you can't feel the synapses in your brain firing. If we were processing all of those activities, every blink, breath, and brainwave would distract and overwhelm us. We take ...