Last year in the Nordic Business Forum, Jim Collins spoke about the importance of going on a journey full of 20-mile marches. The inspiration came from the first two expeditions that were competing to make it to the North Pole a bit more than a century ago.

One expedition didn’t prepare as well as the other one and most of all, they didn’t go for a regular pace and goal of distance to cover, ending up on days with no progress at all and some days covering 70 miles in a day, leaving the crew exhausted. That expedition didn’t reach the end goal and worst of all, they all died on the way.

The second expedition did follow a strict plan of distance to cover daily, no matter how good or bad the conditions were. It enabled them to keep the morale high and make everyone feel like they were continuously progressing without reaching the point of exhaustion and lack of energy that can lead to dramatic consequences in an environment such as the Antarctic.

Hearing about this tale gave us a lot of inspiration to embark on just that, a 20-mile march everyday. The results are quite astonishing as we have improved a lot of things in our operations, come up with new innovative ways of helping our stakeholders as well as being able to grow considerably and more than double the turnover and the number of Agile Search employees. We continue on the daily 20-mile march and hope to learn several new tricks in the Nordic Business Forum 2016!

Do you recognize the principle of continuous improvement and following a steady pace? Share your experiences below.

Are you joining the event? What are you looking to get?

By Jon Karpman