Success and the (Legend of the) Dutch Bicyclist

The plane sped from San Francisco to Heathrow and on to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.  My luggage seemed to enjoy London — it stayed.  When our work with Andersen Consulting (Accenture) ended, I still wore the slacks from the plane but sported a spiffy Andersen-logoed T-shirt.

Still waiting for my luggage to arrive in Zeist, the perfectly mannered hotel clerk graciously loaned me one of the upright, fat-tire bikes to ride west about nine kilometers to the neighboring town of Utrecht. Already salivating, I pictured a luscious Dutch beer in an over-sized stein.  I’d deal with the six mile return trip later.

There’s wisdom in travel. A Google search can’t compare to a live, insightful experience. This embarrassing situation in the Netherlands taught me how to calm down and adapt for success. Working faster or harder just won’t cut it. Hard work is good; hard thinking is brilliant.

That beer and the town of Utrecht have both faded from memory. I’ll always remember the ride to get there and how it confirmed what a friend recounted years earlier. We both worked in Mountain View, California, where his firm financed companies in Silicon Valley.  He smiled and shook his head at my question about hard work crowning the winners and laziness branding the losers. Working nights, weekends and skipping vacations, he said, had nothing to do with anointing eventual winners — “everyone works hard,” he emphasized.

The bike bounced and bobbed on semi-inflated tires as I clutched the old-style handlebars. Like a lumbering semi-truck, my upright body caught and blocked the wind. I hunkered down and pedaled. Spotting a woman up ahead also pedaling, I recalled vague knowledge about the Dutch people — averaging six feet tall and simply monsters on the bicycle.  One brow-raising tidbit reported more bicycles than people in Amsterdam. Well, I wasn’t in Amsterdam, but I thought I’d test this, Legend of the Dutch bicyclist.

Wondering if I was still an athlete, I called upon my former gymnastics and cycling days as I pushed harder.  The slacks moistened and clung to my straining legs as the Andersen shirt filled with sweat.  This woman was good. Her large leather coat and side bags full of groceries hardly slowed her down.  She hit a red light and I began to close the gap, thinking I was still the man.  Green — and she was off again — without me.  Too far back to hear actual sounds, she looked like she was casually whistling a tune. My pride quickened as my body sucked up more testosterone and pedaled even harder. The pants were a mess, and the shirt was drenched. My lungs ached.

This day taught me a lesson. Every hospital, university and startup boasts that they’re pedaling as fast as they can, winning awards, updating salary packages and pitching for more money — pre-written press releases at the ready. After paying my consulting rate, executives and top managers often miss the presentation of results or the training session on retaining their employees — too busy pedaling as fast as they can. I’m guilty of the same excuse, hurriedly trying to manhandle my success — shiny pedals fly, whiz and blur, but results don’t always materialize.

I never caught that woman.  Another red light and a desperate, lurching sprint got me close enough to hear the rumbling, vibrating sounds of a motor echoing around her coat and groceries — the thing was gas-powered. I was racing a motorcycle in work slacks on a borrowed bicycle.

Finally, I realized that success in business would never come from mindless, fast pedaling but from finding the right engine. After the beer came a slow ride back to the Zeist hotel to return the bike, claim my luggage, and head to the next job.

Rick Griggs is the inventor of the rolestorming creativity tool and founder of the Quid Novi Innovation conference. rick@griggsachieve.com
or 970-690-7327.

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