Lessons from the Ceredigion Way–part 2

Whilst we were walking the Ceredigion Way, we learnt that it wasn’t a stroll along the beach, rather a series of seemingly endless ups and downs.  It was hard to decide which was harder, climbing the blooming hills or descending them, down steps that were all the wrong sizes or paths covered with shale, whilst your toes banged into the front of your boots. 

When climbing you needed to motivate yourself to keep going and would look up and go “It’s not far to the top..”, however, more often than not, that wasn’t, in fact, the top!  You’d arrive at the point you had seen only to find there was another ‘top’ another 100 yards on, then another and so on.  I can’t tell if this was heart-breaking or if, had one known at the outset how steep it was, one might have just not bothered!  The truth is probably both.

It made me think… in business, or sport, or just Life-in-general, one never really knows when you are ‘at the top’.  You might think you are and take your foot off the gas, only to discover that you have either been overtaken or that there was another player you were unaware of who is in fact better. 

The other thing that happened, luckily on the last day, was that we lost our maps.  The thing is, we had to use other means to find our path.  Again, in a Change program, you might find yourself ‘off the map’, and you need to find a way to get where you need to be.  You have to review the resources that you have and find an alternative strategy.  The journey will never work out exactly as you expected and you will always have to change, not just yourselves, but your plans too, and if not the destination, perhaps just how you find it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2014 at 08:00 and is filed under General, Hints, Tips & Techniques, Leadership, Personal Change, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.