A year ago Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee threw us a song. Despacito. Do you remember? Who on this planet has not seen Despacito Youtube video or at least listened to it? Fonsi’s song success was beyond his own imagination. The simple repetitive lyrics intertwined with a weird mix of ballad and reggaeton Latin rhythms made it a hit. This song was sticky. At the moment of writing this post, the song has had 5,268,509,048 views. It has become the most-watched YouTube video of all the time.

Maybe it is good for you to remember it:

For those of you who have been following my strategy regatta during the last 9 months. We would like to be consistent and coherent with you. Why did Dongfeng win last Sunday? Was it luck? or was it consistency?. Or a Blue Ocean Strategy carefully designed by Charles Caudrelier, Pascal Bidégorry, and his team? What do you think? How could it be that Dongfeng won the whole race, even though this team triumphed only twice (leg 3 and leg 11), meanwhile the rest of the legs just accomplished “comme ci comme ça”  positions of 2nd, 3rd or even 4th place?

Our answer is consistency. Dongfeng was always on the podium at each leg (either first, second or third place), with exception of Legs 6 and 8 and 10. Dongfeng was not always the winner. But this team did not suffer terrible mishaps. Dongfeng boat was not dismasted, it was not disqualified or retired at any leg. In addition, the crew kept a subtle “comme ci comme ça” spot many times.  But the team was consistent during the entire race, they sailed well, so well, to the point to score the lower elapsed time of 126 days, 1 minute and 46 seconds. The fact that they were not winning all the time, kept them fighting until the last minute to reach their goal. They were slower than the rest in 9 legs, but they emerged as winners at The Hague. Dongfeng demonstrated consistency during the eleven legs.

And so do we. At Eleonora Escalante Strategy we have demonstrated consistency in our strategy knowledge development. Our advice to the industry leaders and investors who are pushing hard to develop Industry 4.0, digital technologies, AI, big data, etc… is to slow down.  We wish to repeat it s-l-o-w-l-y:  Today we wish to tell all of you: Please Slow Down.

During the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-2018, I published 248 times. And we dedicated more than 30 publications to write about the importance of balance, the benefits of slowing down and the value of not making the same mistakes than our precedent generations. Take your time, please.  Don´t rush into things without testing many times and measuring the impact on societies which will lose jobs and are not well educated to assume the challenges and risks of it. Today we will be more direct and bold, we wish to remark on the need to slow down.  It doesn´t matter if it will take two or three generations to deploy these technologies and changes. Better do them right don´t you think?. 

Let us close today publication with the following video from Kimi Werner. Kimi is a champion freediver and spearfisher who “explains how actually, sometimes slowing down is the key to survival in the deep”. Like Kimi, at my company, Eleonora Escalante Strategy, I am learning to slow down and trust in myself. When I started the VOR 2017-2018 I had no idea how to sail. I knew about strategy topics. But nothing about sailing and I took the race challenge. Believe me,  I learned more about what is wrong in our business models and frameworks by doing strategy racing for you. Also after finishing this race, I also will have to slow down to produce the next strategy ladder in business. Despacito.   Thank you for reading us.

Disclaimer: All the presentation slides shown on this blog are prepared by Eleonora Escalante MBA-MEng. Nevertheless, all the pictures or videos shown on this blog are not mine.  I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.

Published by eleonoraescalantestrategy

Corporate Strategy Artist, San Salvador, El Salvador View all posts by eleonoraescalantestrategy