Running together…literally and in business

My favorite proverb is an old African proverb that says “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”

Today I ran the furthest I’ve run this year so far — 8 miles. I ran with my running group (the Road Warriors), but it helped to have one person who ran with me and we paced each other. For the first half of the run we talked and then we eventually put on our earphones and coasted. I don’t think the run would have felt as easy as it was if I ran alone.

Some of the conversation on the run made me think about the importance of also “going together” in business. I reflected on how grateful I am to the team we have at Paga. There is no way we would have achieved all we have without the dedication and hard work of each person who has come on the journey with us. There is no way Paga will achieve the vision we have without everyone on the team working together and excelling in their own area.

All leaders must understand the importance of their team. One of your goals as a leader is to bring together the best people for each role and let them fly. The toughest thing for me on this point is allowing people to fail — I sometimes think I step in too quickly before people fail. It is very tough as a founder to see your team deliver a feature and it doesn’t work or a marketing campaign with errors. Then again letting someone fail is how we learn — as long as we fail quickly, learn from the failure, and get up and go again. In the end, we are all learning and growing — none of us knows it all. So we need to run together, encourage and push each other further. Together we can do great things!