It is unimaginable to consider someone running an extra mile after completing a marathon. But could you imagine the news coverage? Even if he didn’t do it for that, it would be worth talking about:
Dave Jones, after completing the NYC Marathon, continues running for an extra mile. When asked why, his response was, ‘I figured I’d be the only one crazy enough to want to keep going. I just wanted to see what it felt like.’
There’s a group of people I am connected to: We are called the ruckus makers. We’re students of Seth Godin’s altMBA, and we do crazy things.
We write blog posts daily.
We search for answers to unanswerable questions.
We look for ways to make things better.
We don’t follow the herd.
We dance with fear.
We stand up to injustice.
We disrupt the marketplace, for the greater good.
We aren’t the only ones doing this, but we’re the ones to take the leap to sign up for 4 weeks of sprinting to dig deeper into our projects and begin shipping better, faster.
I believe the extra mile isn’t as crazy as it seems. It’s just something most people are not willing to do because there’s no one leading. People need leaders worth following, and unless there’s someone leading the extra mile, no one will be going there. There’s no precedence, no reason.
We can all just get along in the world everyone else is living in. And we’ll be just fine.
But for anyone who has ever decided to make a ruckus; anyone who wanted to explore uncharted territory; anyone who believed the status quo wasn’t enough for them and wanted more.
You know one thing —we won’t likely change anything doing what has always been done and we definitely won’t change anything by standing in the middle of the masses with cattle prods trying to convince them that they are wrong for believing what they believe.
The only way to change the way people think is to go beyond what they believe and show them a different way. Prove that there’s something along the road less traveled. To want change isn’t enough, it’s up to us to illustrate that there’s something better. To do the hard work, the lonely work, the unsupported, difficult work of paving a new way.
And this is exactly why it’s so quiet along the extra mile. The trick is — you’re not alone. The trick is finding the others who want to go the extra mile.
And, when we find enough of us, we’ll change the culture, we’ll make the difference. We’ll stop settling.
Are you a woman CEO, leader, or entrepreneur and looking to grow your business alongside a group of other like-minded women?
