The Gift of Speed | Business Lessons from the Rabbit

Now that the panic over the pandemic has ended and the masks are off, what do you see when you return to your city’s shopping district? Have all the shops disappeared? Perhaps some of them have shut down, relocated or downsized. For many others, it is business as usual.

When it comes to the business world, we are always told that things move fast. And yet, as I look around me, I see that it is business as usual. Somedays, it feels like the pandemic never happened at all. But we all know that it did.

So why does it feel like the past three years never even happened? Perhaps it is because of our ability to change, to shift gears and then to go back to where we were before all of this happened.

Perhaps most of us are not the tortoise, but rather… the rabbit.

The Rabbit

Rabbits possess both mental and physical agility. They shift gears quickly when necessary. In the business world, there are a lot of instances where we have to do just that. We have to change our plans, change the road we are on and even change the people who are around us.

It requires us to move quickly when we realise that a change needs to be made. During the pandemic, there were those who resisted change and those who embraced it. There is nothing wrong with either strategy.

Speed is sometimes key to running a business. It is what enables us to take on short-term opportunities that others may miss. Sometimes that small window of opportunity is all that we have and if we wait too long, it will be gone. It may well not be there next year or the year after.

Nevertheless, a restless nature makes it hard for anyone to stick with anything for long. While a long-term commitment isn’t always necessary to succeed, it is vital in certain industries. There is nothing wrong with thinking short-term either. Sometimes all we need to do is to make it through the season or the tough times alive.

Rabbits have always been a symbol for fertility. Even though they generally don’t live for very long, they have many offspring and this ensures the continued survival of the species. The rabbit is not an aggressive animal. It handles conflicts peacefully and is generally not combative. This is because it is a prey animal.

Given the speed of the rabbit, it suggests that we move quickly or pick up the pace when it comes to our business. At the same time, the way of the rabbit reminds us not to hop from one thing to another. Well, technically we can.

Hop. Hop. Hop.