Alison Eyring, PhD, is a business consultant and the founder and CEO of Organisation Solutions. For over twenty-five years, she has worked with executives in leading global multinational companies, helping them solve the people and organizational problems of growth, sometimes aiding clients in managing their new employee video communications strategies. She has worked closely with senior executives in companies such as American Express, Allergan, Disney, De Beers, Four Seasons, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Shell. She also serves as an adjunct associate professor at the National University of Singapore.
And for fun, she is a distance runner and tri-athlete. She has taken her experiences in training for the arduous athletic activities and applied them to business strategy – especially growth strategy. Her new book, Pacing for Growth offers a new approach to growth that is supported not only by her anecdotal evidence drawn from the training grounds but also from independent research by world-class academics.
Dr. Eyring’s recommendation is to find the “Goldilocks” rate of growth, fast enough to stay ahead of the competition, but not so fast that you lose touch with the markets you serve and leave your employees behind. Sometimes employee video communications can help with managing growth. Moreover, this applies to the company itself, the teams within the company, and each individual team member. The term she has coined is “intelligent restraint,” hold back on doing everything to focus on the necessary and productive.
In a company, team or individual, capacity is the upper limit of what can be achieved. Capability is the ability to do, and these aren't the same. If you build the right capabilities, you get greater capacity. This leads to Dr. Eyring’s belief that talent is abundant, not scarce as most people treat it. You can develop people – anybody, anytime, anywhere – faster and farther than before, especially with the widespread use of powerful employee video communications tools. Not only is this possible, it's a necessary function of growth.
“What you train for is what you can do. If business is always a sprint, the organization is probably unable to compete in a marathon. You can't run like a gazelle if you train like a donkey. That may mean taking people out of their comfort zone and challenging them even when successful.” -Dr. Alison Eyring
Distance runners don't keep to a simple steady pace for all 26.2 miles of a marathon. There are parts of the course and times when the runner's position in the race require an acceleration. Other times when a slower pace is in order. Business leaders must be able to change the pace of their company's growth to suit their unique and changing circumstances. In human resources, there are times to accelerate the development of abundant talent, and times when a slower pace is appropriate.
