When you have the chance to travel by train, airplane, or boat, watching the other passengers is exciting. Indeed, most travellers do not attach any importance to the outside environment during the whole trip, too concerned about getting to their destination as quickly as possible.
What a pity, because the journey contains many lessons and above all allows us to apprehend, in the noble and positive sense of the word, the destination, to contextualize it and to bring it as a matter of course.
We find these same elements in the business world. During important projects aimed at bringing a product to market, the path, the steps, the options, and the intermediate choices are of paramount importance.
It is often during the development of products, concepts, or solutions that one refines, improves, optimizes, almost never when launching them on the market. The design journey is therefore, in my opinion, much more exciting than presenting a finished product, a product that escapes us and lives “its own life”.
I have had the privilege of working with many colleagues on important projects. I was delighted to discover their ways of doing things, but especially their interests during the design phase, and I checked whether my intuition was right during informal conversations.
After 40 years in business, I can say, without too much mistake, that the colleagues most involved in the conceptual phase were those who were interested in travelling, whether professional or private, and in discovering the world, not those who told me about their destinations.
Setting a goal is of course paramount, but the way to get there, the steps to take, the challenges and above all the permanent discovery along the way are the most captivating moments. This journey allows us to approach the final phase (the destination) with serenity, with full awareness and a form of joy at having arrived there.
The business world is tough and the challenges today are immense, but most groups today are focused on results, leaving aside the way to get there in honourable conditions, with a little humanity and empathy by omitting certain steps: forgetting the path is forgetting where you come from and where you are going.
On your next trips: looking out the window, you will learn more than by leaning over your Excel spreadsheets.
Take care of yourself.