Is Family Business a Marathon or Sisyphus

Business is a marathon. Successful Family Businesses are relay marathons.

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It’s August. It’s time for the Crim. The Crim Festival of Races is an annual road running event over 10 miles which has been held in August in Flint, Michigan since 1977. It draws runners from around the world from countries such as Kenya, Russia, and Ukraine. The race attracts approximately 50,000 people each year.

What can family business, small business learn from a marathon?

Emil Zátopek was a Czech long-distance runner best known for winning three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He won gold in the 5000 meters and 10,000 meters runs, but his final medal came when he decided at the last minute to compete in the first marathon of his life.

He once said, “If one can stick to the training, then will power is no longer a problem. It’s raining? That doesn’t matter. I am tired? That’s beside the point. It’s simply that I just have to.”

Sisyphus is one of the most tragic figures of Greek mythology — a man condemned by the gods to spend eternity, pushing a large boulder up a hill. Every time he gets the boulder close to the top, it rolls back down, forcing him to start all over again. Lack of strategic foresight is the reason for this sisyphusic experience in family business, small business and firms of any size. (click to enlarge)

Business is a marathon. Successful Family Businesses are relay marathons. There are thousands of allegories comparing business to sports. Recently some B school folks shared the following comparisons. Success takes training, when we want to discuss performance management – we must remember success takes training. We need to keep training, developing and challenging ourselves- or we will be disappointed.

Success does not happen overnight.

In business like marathons the training is long and the events may only be 3 or 4 a year. Consider the Olympic runners that trained for a year and their event was over in less than 10 seconds! Launching a new product, a new ERP system doesn’t happen overnight and requires focus. Even marathons don’t do it alone.

In business like in racing it takes a team. Great runners have support systems, sometimes its spouse and family, other times its an entire entourage; the best runners will tell you they never cross the finish line alone. They are bolstered and carried by their Team.

There are few many more, you will want to quit, it will hurt, you’ll need to have a written plan and you will have to make adjustments and sacrifices.

In business like the marathon it’s not of question of if you can, the question is do ya?

Zátopek said “If one can stick to the training, then will power is no longer a problem. It’s raining? That doesn’t matter. I am tired? That’s beside the point.

It’s simply that I just have to.”