FARNSWORTH'S FIRST LAW OF LIFE, LEADERSHIP, AND BICYCLES - Part
Two
It's a lot easier to keep your balance when you're moving forward.
My brother Lane has led hundreds of horseback trips into the San
Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado in the past 40 years. He knows the
mountains and he knows how to handle horses.
Lane has found that experienced mountain horses generally work
hard and are well behaved as long as they keep moving along the trail. However,
if the trail boss loiters too long at the trailhead or stops too long or too
frequently along the way, the horses start biting, kicking, and shoving each
other. (There's a reason it's called "horseplay.") If that happens,
Lane says, the leader must get the group back on the trail and moving forward
as soon as possible.
According to Lane, the keys to successfully leading a train of
pack horses are to (1) know where you're headed, (2) get moving, and (3) keep
moving steadily toward your destination. Even though he's not likely to use or
recognize the term, Lane understands and employs the underlying principle of
Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Bicycles: "It's a lot easier to keep your
balance when you're moving forward."
Lane and Scott on the
trail in the Weminuche Wilderness in Colorado.
This principle pertains as much to humans as it does to horses and
bicycles. Individuals, families, and work groups who apply the concept are more
likely to be successful, while those who don't do so tend to be less
successful.
I once worked with the head of a large organization with 10
divisions and 3,000 members. He had no clear vision of where the organization
was going and was not enthusiastic about defining his vision, much less
communicating it to the people in the organization.
He saw his principal role as trouble shooting problems and putting
out fires. When I suggested he should step outside his day-to-day tasks to
define and share his vision for the organization, he resisted. How could he
stop and do that, he asked, when he was already overwhelmed wrestling with
problems and putting out fires?
As it happened, there were always plenty of troubles and fires for
him to handle. It seemed to me that by focusing on problems, he attracted more
of them.
At the same time, the lack of forward momentum caused the energy
of the organization to be dissipated on petty internal concerns. Without
direction and a forward-focused vision, the organization languished and the
people in it were constantly squabbling, getting into mischief, and spawning
emergencies. Dealing with these issues took even more of his time and made it
even less likely that he would ever establish a clear vision of where they were
going.
I have observed that heads of organizations who lack "that
vision thing," as George H. W. Bush described it, have a difficult time
rallying their troops or keeping them out of trouble. King Solomon wrote that
"where there is no vision, the people perish." Proverbs 29: 18.
Usually they die from marching in endless circles, from starvation, or from constant
infighting.
Such officers may be in charge of organizations, but they are not
leaders. Being a leader requires purpose, vision, direction, and forward
movement.
The concept that it is impossible to keep a non-moving bicycle
upright is not very complicated. As a former student once derisively described
it, this principle is "stupidly simple and 'duh' obvious."
"Everybody knows that!"
he said.
I fully agree.
And yet, knowing that, how often do we find ourselves in a swirl
of crises because we don't have a clear vision and purpose?
How often do we get bogged down in a swamp of minutiae and trouble
because we forget to focus on our primary objective?
How often do we allow interruptions and distractions to divert our
attention and throw us off balance, draining precious energy and resources away
from our main mission?
Sometimes, even if we don't yet know all the answers to how we're
going to get to where we want to go, we simply must put one foot in front of
the other and start moving.
Often the answer is to just "head 'em up and move 'em
out."
When we do, we often find that forward momentum itself resolves or
makes irrelevant the nagging issues that previously kept us paralyzed.
Forward momentum itself gives us the energy to break through
barriers that once seemed insurmountable.
Forward momentum itself takes us to a place where we can see
clearly how to reach our ultimate objective.
Sometimes the solution to our quandaries is to get on our horses
and start riding toward our destination.
Or as Lane would say: "Mount up and let's get moving!"
