Health Speed
Inspired by a post from 🦓 Lee Fitzpatrick of Zebra Growth on LinkedIn.
The Speed of Marketing
Let’s pause and talk about human health and the speed of the marketing industry.
I come from exemplary agencies with excellence at their core, where quality, value, and speed are mandatory aspects of work delivery. All three business levers turned high:
🎚️ Speed ⬆️
🎚️ Quality ⬆️
🎚️ Value ⬆️
Those all sound great, the juicy fruits of marketing, but how are all three delivered? In my experience, often from switching down or off the invisible fourth business lever:
🎚️ Health ⬇️
How many times in your career have you lowered the fourth lever for work? Or pushed your health to the limit for a job? Personally, I’ve done it a lot, always for project greatness, limited budgets, or tight deadlines.
Do more: More fast, more good, more cheap, more than ever! Combine all the industry’s job descriptions into one and it could look something like this punchy blurb:
“Create magic while managing multiple deadlines simultaneously in a fast-paced, high-energy environment with extraordinary output… “
That sounds fast.💨 That sounds profitable.🤑 That sounds valuable to business… but what about the human? Is it health to always work fast and good for a deal? Is that regenerative?
Think about your own job description... Is it equally as punchy, and does it sound like health? I invite you to continue the search for health into your world.
Health Levels at Marketing Speed
Where is the human constitution in this fast-good-deal criterion assessment of business?
My role at Zebra Growth inspires and encourages me to prioritise the health lever above all. But why? Because beyond the truth that health is good for business, health actually enables business.
For each of us, what is the business cost of a single health sacrifice we make for our jobs? Zoom out, what are the financial burdens, community impacts, or societal effects of that same sacrifice? It starts to butterfly. Then multiply that cost by all the cumulative health sacrifices we make through our careers. How does that look? Whoa.
How long can the health lever stay low before the break happens? Then what’s the cost, therapy?
Through over a decade I’ve seen multiple practitioners in weekly therapy—an obvious theme has emerged: Industry work stress.
I once asked a therapist for advice during a panic of juggling many work projects and deadlines and they responded, “The one constant you’ve communicated to me in all my years of seeing you is the speed of your career and the demands you manage within that environment.”
Is this my story or all our stories? I’m still sorting out the answers.
It’s funny, paradoxical, ironic that I have worked at health agencies, and on healthcare accounts, and poured my heart into health projects, yet where in any of it I question was real human health? My therapist’s words ring in my ears…
Slowing Down to Raise Health
Three times I recall needing to slow down in my career for human health reasons.
Each time was a two-way street: Business and team not knowing how to reduce the speed of work, and myself not knowing how to actually slow down and still be relevant in the workplace. These moments were:
Managing and recovering from an alcohol addiction
Returning to work after a kidney transplant donation surgery
Returning to work after being hospitalised from working too much with an undiagnosable infection while simultaneously helping family manage a homelessness crisis
All legitimate reasons for needing to slow down, yet in each scenario work attempted to accommodate my needs, and I attempted to communicate my needs, both unsuccessfully.
Can you relate? Have you ever needed to slow down for obvious health reasons? Or even subtle health reasons simply to meet our basic human needs?
What are human needs in the midst of working on projects? Who knows? How can we know if the time we need for reflection is spent delivering deadlines out the door, or in overlooking our humanity to meet business objectives?
Reflecting on Moving the Levers
While searching for ways to manage work demands with a life crisis, a lovely human resources friend once asked:
“Have you tried putting aside your feelings for work?”
This inquiry came immediately after I had returned to work from being hospitalised in the ER. I wrote it down in my notes for how I could improve to be a better employee. The system teaches us to work hard and forget about feelings. Is putting aside our feelings health?
What I know now but couldn’t articulate at that time was that sacrificing what I feel, “putting aside my feelings”, is how I ended up in the hospital in the first place. So I ask another way, is it health to ignore, suppress, or defer our feelings for business? Is it human to be asked to compartmentalize feelings in order to meet business objectives or work beyond conscious limits?
For What: Quality, speed, value?
For Who: Business, you, society?
For Why: Because someone asked you to?
Or is the ability to feel the very thing that makes us human and can the value of feeling be proven?
Could ‘feeling’ be intrinsic to both health AND business?
How can we communicate our health needs—or even be aware of what they are—when we work at speeds that prevent reflection and feeling? Turbulence prevents growth. Here’s a business story:
Go fast, make, meet deadline.
Go faster, make, meet more deadlines.
Go more faster, make more, meet dead…
I had a turtle friend once—I loved that turtle—he taught me much great wisdom. I learned from him that speed causes trauma. When I moved quickly around him it disturbed his environment, causing panic and distress. When I moved empathetically to his needs, I saw peace and harmony reflected. Steadiness, calmness, patience… process, creates growth. The same business story above could look more regenerative as something like this:
Feel… plan
Go fast, patiently make it to milestone.
Celebrate
Stabilize, reflect, journal
Organize, connect
Repeat…
There’s a reason for the saying, “slow and steady wins the race.”… ‘Pacing’ is above ‘racing’… the more methodical and conscious we make it to milestones, the more health we find in ourselves, our business, and the environments we belong to.
Health felt is health reflected.
Adjusting Business to the Health Lever
When we realise that human health IS business, we protect our humanity and move industry into more regenerative practices.
The fourth lever of business, health, is a precious resource. We could even say it’s the true currency of the industry. How do we spend our health? How do we recharge when its depleted? And how do we move from health extraction to health replenishment?
How do we regenerate?
Look to nature and simply be.
🧘 Be…
🧘♀️ To Be…
🧘♂️ Being…
Such power in those little words. Perhaps marketing is afraid of that power? Perhaps we humans are afraid of it? The power of being. Instead of being afraid, we can be honest and recognise the power that is being, and learn to collaborate with it.
Slow down.
Observe.
Be.
Work being human into your business.
Work humans being into your work.
Being is essential.
What’s your take?
How do you feel about the speeds of your work or industry? Too fast? Too slow? Or perhaps just right? Share in the comments.