In this article I will explore how to apply marathon strategies to your business growth and transform your business strategy.  Before working with small business owners with AGame Masterminds, I worked with high-performing digital development teams as an Agile Coach.  One of the frameworks we used, and is still very much in favour now, was Scrum with its ‘Sprints’.  

A fundamental principle of Agile is the idea of ‘sustainable pace’:

“Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.”

But I had concerns over the metaphor and the implication of what sometimes felt like ‘relentless’, indefinite ‘sprinting’.

To answer this nagging doubt, I started looking into a different ‘model’ based upon the idea of a ‘marathon’ rather than a sprint, and later an ‘Infinite Game’.  Even though I had run a few 10Ks when I was younger, I had never run a marathon, so I started looking to others to learn what it took to run a marathon.

After a short investigation, I found some discussion on how to run the race. One reasonable way to run was to split the race into two or three stages and warm up to your best pace over the early stages.  Then, push the boundaries and maybe take some ‘risks’ during the middle stage. Then, look towards doing what it takes to complete the run in the race’s last stage.

One article talked about the three stages as ‘B’ for Bang, the initial adrenaline spike when the gun to start fires.  The next stage is the “Cruising and Killing Time” where you settle into a racing pace, and push to your best time.  The final stage is the “Chasing Vests and keeping focus”, where you chase to get your best time, or just enough to keep going.

Another article by Nick Arciniaga talked about “4 strategies from a pro to run your best marathon”.  In this, he also suggests breaking the race down into three stages: the first is a half marathon, where he hits his comfortable pace; the next is a 10-mile segment, where he pushes himself and takes some risks; and the final stage depends on how well he’s feeling, the aim is to get to the end so if it’s been tough he goes into survival mode, but if it’s going well, he puts it all on the line and then ‘put everything you have towards the finish.’

So if we mirror this to a project, then we could say that the first half of the project is pacing and getting to race speed, the next section is stretching and pushing to get as much done, and the final push is either to get as much as you can and push to the end or, consolidate and get just enough done to ‘survive’.

For most of us, 3 months or 12 weeks is as far in the future as we can realistically plan, so this is how I would map out a 12-week ‘marathon’ using the strategies above:

• First half, 6 weeks, is getting to ‘race’ pace
• The next 4 weeks are stretching, getting as much as you can done
• The final two weeks are either hell for leather, ‘leave it all on the track’ or consolidating to wrap up and complete.

I’ve said I dislike the sprint metaphor (and Scrum - don’t get me started on the Rugby theme as an ex-tight head prop).  However, small iterations with feedback loops are extremely powerful.  But if we’re using the marathon metaphor, what would we call them?  I must admit, I liked the ‘fartlek’ term I came across while researching, but it’s a training term.  However, I noticed that runners use ‘splits’ to time themselves.  So, if we continue the metaphor, I would like ‘splits’ as a name for the small iterations.

During the race a runner, will have an aim for the split – a plan; a review of the time – a product review, and maybe a small process review, how’s the race going, all standard ‘inspect and adapt’ Agile practices.

But as I was reading through this, one thing did strike me.  Most marathon runners train long for a marathon; even first-timers are encouraged to take months building up as they go from couch to a marathon.  They would go into the marathon with experience of running, having done fartleks maybe (see I can’t ditch that wonderfully evocative name as an English schoolboy who remembers looking up ‘fart’ in the dictionary in primary school and sniggering with glee at the definition – ‘a small explosion between the legs’ – back in the room.). They would know their timings for their splits before they run the marathon.

This is all good for an established team (even a team of 1) working on a project they have some experience with. But what about a new team, project, or product?

Well again, I looked to the marathon metaphor for help and found a couple of articles by runners who’ve gone straight into a marathon with no real training.  One that stuck in my mind was “How to hack a marathon if you aren’t a runner” by Andrew Gertig - https://lifehacker.com/how-to-run-a-marathon-without-any-training-5744057

What I liked about this was his 10 tips. 

1. Don’t plan on running the whole thing
2. Take 4 Advil an hour before the race (Not recommended by physicians, but it’s what we did.)
3. Take a walking break at every mile marker
4. Eat half a banana whenever you see one
5. Take two waters at ever water station
6. Eat no more than 3 Gu energy packs because our stomachs didn’t like them
7. Take bathroom breaks
8. Walk every hill
9. Meet interesting people and use conversation to kill the pain
10. Put bandaids on your nipples to prevent bleeding 

For me that’s split into a couple of groups:

• Preparation
  • bandaids, Advil, not planning on running
• Race pacing
  • walking every mile, water at each station, bathroom breaks, walk every hill
• Energy/food
  • banana, water, not loads of Gu packs
• Support
  • meet interesting people

How does that equate to working on a new project?

• Preparation
  • What can you do to reduce the ‘pain’ of the marathon?
  • What is the minimal ‘pace’ for the project?  Don’t make plans for doing much more than that?
• Project pacing
  • How can you take a break after every ‘milestone’?
  • How can you take care during challenging stages?
• Motivation and Energy
  • How can you keep up the energy of the team?
• Support
  • How can you get support from others during this time?

This exercise started as a small experiment in metaphors out of a niggle with a current metaphor (sprint and rugby) when I was working with development teams.  Since then, I have been experimenting with the marathon schedule and splits for my own 12-week ‘programs’, or ‘seasons’, and it has evolved into part of the 54321…Play! - strategic and tactical planning system that I use with my coachees and mastermind members.

If you’d like to learn more about the 54321…Play! system, and be informed of the next open Mastermind or Coaching slots, sign up for the waitlist here - or book a discovery call and get ready to post your best marathon times as you grow your business sustainably.