What Marathon taught me about Management?

Supporters on the train, which is specially catered by the organiser

I am not someone that people thought would go around completing Marathons, yet I am doing it. I was overweight when I started my service with the Republic of Singapore Navy in 1996. Running is to ensure that I can clear my Individual Physical Proficient Test (IPPT). Before 2002, the longest distance that I run was 10km, and it took quite an effort for me to finish that.

In 2002, I took up the challenge to complete my first Marathon in Singapore. I am an incidental Marathoner as I missed the exit at the halfway mark and ended up dragging myself to complete the entire race with a leg injury. That day started my journey as a Marathoner, but I have not been actively completing Marathons until much more recently.

An active volcano, Sakurajima

It took me 6 Marathons to learn how to complete the entire 42.159km without injury, and it is on the 8th Marathon that I did it. After completing the event, I can continue to explore a hilltop observatory that oversees Kagoshima’s city. Kagoshima Marathon is my 8th Marathon and my 4th Overseas Marathon, and it took place on 4 March 2018, one of the best Marathon for me.

Half-way mark and enjoying my break and the view along the way.

When I am training and running my Marathons, many instances taught me different management lessons, which helped me throughout my career.

1. Set a Goal and get started. You can plan for anything, but without a goal, our mind and body procrastinate. The goal needs to be SMART so that we have the clarity to know how to achieve it. Those into Project Management can start to breakdown this goal into a WBS and start working on it. Management needs to set a SMART goal and be specific on the deliverable, intended outcome and expectation, let the team members work towards that.
2. Break down the goal into smaller chunks for easy execution. It is similar to why we need to bite before swallowing our food to ease digestion. It is crucial to have a small win to continue to get motivated in moving ahead. Training and planning for Marathon is not an easy task, and it is easier to break them into different parts and celebrate when achieving them. The team should breakdown goals into smaller executable steps, and management should celebrate small wins with them, keeping them motivated. Such taste of victory is essential, and people will remember that feeling and want to get that feeling again.
3. Success can be incidental, but you got to be there in the first place. I am not likely to continue my Marathon journey if I managed to exit from that halfway mark in 2002. There is no sure win in businesses, and winning could be very far where people give up hope. Instead of giving up, one should continue and build on those failures. If we have given up without a fight, we will not be there when the time is right and opportunity strikes.
4. Nothing beats experiencing it first hand, and the rest are just tabletop planning. When I am planning for my first Marathon in colder places, there are many questions that I need to find out. I tried to google for answers and find myself getting too much information. Eventually, I have decided to face it and experience it myself. What could be worse than not doing it? We will encounter many businesses advises and procrastinate on what’s going to happen. By planning instead of acting on it, we could be missing out on opportunities. Plan for it, seek relevant advise and proceed to execute it.
5. In the competition, beat yourself and not another person. It’s essential to focus on our own pace and not to compete against another person. Some elites could complete the entire journey in less than 150 minutes; I cannot beat them. What’s important is to focus on finishing the run and enjoying myself along the way. There are already many business cases that show being the first do not mean winning it all.
6. There’s time to train, and it’s essential to rest. Rest allows the body to build and strengthen itself, enabling us to do more. Similar to running a business, it is crucial to plan our rest time. This type of downtime enables one to stop thinking about work and wander our thoughts, doing something beyond work. It is vital for our brain to sort out those thoughts and to get creative.

I am still learning new things after each Marathon journey.

Finisher Medal for Kagoshima Marathon 2018

My last Marathon was Sun Moon Lake Marathon on 28 October 2018, and that was my 9th Marathon. I was looking around for a Marathon that I can clock my 10th when COVID-19 hit. COVID took a toll on my physical, mental & financial health, changing the lives of many people around the World, which leads to another lesson.

No matter how well is our plan, we can never plan for a Black Swan event. I will share more on this when I am writing articles on Project Management.

All these “experiences” are interrelated, and it’s tough to look at them individually. We ought to see them as a whole and work our plans through them.

Running is not, as it so often seems, only about what you did in your last race or about how many miles you ran last week. It is, in a much more important way, about community, about appreciating all the miles run by other runners, too.
-Richard O’Brien

Thank you for reading.