Gradually, then suddenly

Ernest Hemingway writes in The Sun Also Rises:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

This week in the Sprint Social I had:

6 footballers

1 mum

1 Rugby player

2 Dads

3 Squash players

For a session that started just 9 weeks ago, I came away from the session feeling happy. By most measures, that’s success. After all, there were 13 people in a field, learning how to move quickly. Yet, for the Sprint Social, the mission has drifted; it’s failure dressed as success.

Sprinting is not social – it’s usually people running away from everyone else as fast as they can. The Sprint Social is designed differently. It’s not really about sprinting; it’s about what happens when people gather around the idea of doing something they haven’t done before.

The Sprint Social is not a dump and run; it’s a come and run.

Fear not, it’s the last of 10 sessions next week, and before we come back, we’ll take a look at how we hold up what makes Sprint Social the thing it is – a counterintuitive gathering, it may be, but perhaps that’s the point.

It might fail, but it will never go bankrupt.