Identity
“There’s a point, seven thousand RPM, where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless, it just disappears. And all that’s left is a body moving through space and time. Seven thousand RPM, that’s where you meet it. It creeps up near you, and it asks you a question. The only question that really matters. Who are you?”
- Carroll Shelby
Carroll Shelby has been tasked with the impossible: to beat Enzo Ferrari on his home turf. And not only win but bring the Ford motor company into the limelight as a premier automaker of high-performance racing machines and not just a “big ugly factory” that makes “big ugly cars” as the Ferrari crew seems to believe.
In order to accomplish the impossible, it is going to take doing things unconventional and even uncomfortable. Ford was historically created by a committee with layers of management trying to assert their authority and assume credit for everything that happens below them. The kind of car that would change motorsports history cannot be incubated in that type of environment.
To do something of this caliber, rogue thinking from unconventional purists was required. A couple of mischievous insiders played around the rules instead of within them. People who believed in the mythic nature of driving saw endless possibilities where others saw none.
These kinds of rascals believed that there was a point of Nirvana beyond the dashboard, beyond time and space, where uncharacteristic clarity could be found. A point on the horizon where all other questions, concerns, and impossibilities fade.
When we were planning on working with several dozen South African businesses, we had some hard choices to make. How much time would we spend focusing on the incredible challenges of their socio-economic situation? How much would we immerse ourselves in the daunting predicament facing their enterprises?
Ultimately, we decided that we shouldn’t spend much time on that at all. We needed to be aware that there was an incredibly difficult backdrop to every conversation we had, but that our mission for them needed to transcend circumstance. We needed to look beyond the dashboard far into the endless horizon.
We knew we had hit our mark when one leader at a workshop summed up his experience by saying,
“You have given us tools to change the nation. You have restored my hope.”
It turns out that there is a universal journey that every organization or company must take. It seems to transcend size, country, language, and even culture.
Ultimately, beyond the United States or South Africa, we have a citizenry in a Kingdom. We serve a King and a Kingdom, not of this world. That identity is typically obscured by all the others but is essential to claim. It is the identity above and beyond all others.
“There’s a point, seven thousand RPM, where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless, it just disappears. And all that’s left is a body moving through space and time. Seven thousand RPM, that’s where you meet it. It creeps up near you, and it asks you a question. The only question that really matters. Who are you?”
Consider
Who are you?
Are you clear enough about who you are in ways that allow you to transcend your circumstance or present challenges?
Do those you lead draw comfort and certainty from that unwavering identity?
How essential is knowing who you are at this time in the human story?