Marathon-Running & Shipbuilding

Running a business is like running a marathon.

Marathon running is a long and difficult continuous activity that is made possible by that regular monitoring and slight adjustments that keep you running.

You need to keep monitoring stuff - like your heart rate, cadence, energy levels etc.

You find your rhythm, monitor your pace, and make subtle adjustments and adaptations to keep going. The terrain may shift, but the motion is continuous.

It is doing the same thing continuously for a long time. That’s the achievement - doing the same thing well, over time, with consistency and control, most often to achieve on a target you set for the run.

Changing a business is like shipbuilding.

You step into the dry dock, surrounded by raw materials, blueprints, and possibility. You’re building something to make a journey with. It’s not about motion—it’s about making. You’re designing, engineering, assembling, testing.

Each part requires different tools, skills, and sequences, and often involves collaboration across disciplines. Sometimes you just stop and look at it to think for a while.

Rather than sustained repetition, shipbuilding is about orchestration. You’re not just doing one thing well over time or maintaining momentum—you’re coordinating many moving parts, constructing something new, often in parallel, often in uncertainty.

It’s not about endurance or performance alone—it’s about construction, where each piece must fit into a larger, coherent whole.

Once its done, you stop. Changing a business comes in waves (pardon the pun) whereas running the business is a necessary constant.

Where the marathon is about performance, shipbuilding is about transformation.
Where running is repetition, building is orchestration.
Where the business runner adapts to stay the course, the business builder reimagines the course itself.

And when the ship is ready, you launch. You return to the rhythm of running—but now, in a vessel built for new waters.