When Progress Feels Too Slow

A few weeks ago, I was jogging with my middle-school son who has been trying to learn to run. About half a mile in, he got emotional and upset because of how hard it was (granted, August is probably not the smartest time to pick up the habit of running).

“I’m so bad at this,” he wailed. “Of course you are,” I replied. “How good do you think I was when I started?” “GOOD of course,” he responded. Of course I immediately corrected that with the accurate information that I was brutally slow and gasping for breath when I started running (and honestly, any sport, because I am not naturally super athletic.

But it left me thinking how often we expect progress SO much faster than it actually happens in real life.

Bill Gates famously said that “most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

Progress is excruciatingly slow at times. But speed has its own demons. Growth at all costs can hurt the company culture, negatively impact proftiability, and, perhaps most importantly, scar the people responsible for managing that growth.

Meaningful progress often takes much longer than we want it to. But slow progress is not failure (I am preaching to myself also).

As we enter the fourth quarter, take time to review the previous year’s wins.

What can you do today that you could not do a year ago? What has your team learned? What difficult thing has become a little easier? What foundation are you building that may not produce visible results until much later?

Small steps count.

Forward progress is still forward progress.