The Fast and Far Dilemma — Not as Simple as I Thought

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

By now, it is a very cliched saying that curiously does not seem to be evoked as much compared to the 2000s. Perhaps it is because our society demands both agility and endurance as prerequisites for success. After all, how can you go far if you miss the windows of opportunity where speed is of the essence.

This is not to say that nurturing a team is unnecessary. In fact, I dare say that any celebrated solo endeavours are simply the omission (unintentionally or otherwise) of the efforts of others. So then why do I not have a team yet?

Rewind back to when I started and my reasons for doing so were simply pragmatic in nature. I did not have the resources for anyone to join me, so I just did everything on my own. It was also a conscious choice because if I were to grow a team, I wanted to appreciate what they do, and what better way to achieve that than by suffering through their specialised craft. 

This went on for many years, and while I have had frequent collaborators during the process, I have never taken the leap to expand into a team proper. Perhaps there was an apprehension to the idea of it. To manage a team is to deal in HR, to run a company, to care about the long-term growth of others. These are important, full time responsibilities - and producing documentaries is already a handful enough.

Yet by avoiding this pain, I confront another - capacity overload. As my momentum grows faster, ambitions larger and opportunities heavier, there is a risk that I may be overwhelmed and crumble. This makes sense as things that go fast often shed structural integrity for speed. In the infinity game of business and life, this was definitely not the answer.

I've managed to endure so far by acknowledging my circumstances and adapting my systems and processes to them in a manner that does not diminish the final output (the critical factor that decides whether all this was worthwhile). In most instances, I moderated heavy workloads by compartmentalising and being more proficient in the tasks that made up the progress. This response was more than reactionary. It was a result of identifying such circumstances from the get-go and working hard on building the necessary capacity and capability to do so.

However, there were other times where I declined opportunities due to my inability to take on more, even if I was interested in doing so. These missed opportunities pain me, and are stark reminders on what I need to do in order to progress. And so it is time - time for me to accept that going fast and far requires the efforts of more than myself. It will be a whole new dimension for me to experience, but I believe that my 8 years of experiences will allow me to walk a mile in their shoes, so that they embark on the journey with me for much further.