Daily Inspiration: Speed and Agility – “Be the cheetah, not the turtle”

“Be the cheetah, not the turtle” – Futurist Jim Carroll

In Hawaii, you can swim with turtles.

At the resort where I’m staying, all you need to do is put on a snorkel and a mask, and head out into the shallows, and you’ll meet up with these majestic creatures gliding gracefully through the water.

They’re delightfully slow.

But I’m never one to miss the opportunity to think about what I am seeing and use it as a prompt for some type of insight.

Hence, today’s quote. On stage, I’ll often use the obvious metaphor of being a turtle vs. an animal that is fast, agile, and swift to adapt – which brings me to this article, in which the Governor of the Cayman Islands referred to a keynote I gave an economic development conference there some years ago.

The full article is here, but here are the relevant parts concerning the need to be a cheetah!

“Of particular interest to your editor were the words—and the AK-47 speed at which they were uttered—of Jim Carroll”

At this time back in 2007, I was the opening keynote speaker for the Cayman Business Forum. I had about 700 people in the room; international financiers, wealth managers, bankers. At the time, Cayman was one of the world’s leading offshore banking centers – and the mission of my keynote was to wake up the audience to the vast changes swirling through the global financial community – trends that could make Cayman into a sleepy backwater in the grand scheme of global finance.

When I was preparing for my keynote, I had the delightful opportunity of speaking for about 1/2 hr the prior evening with the Governor of the Cayman, H.E. Stuart Jack, at his home, where he hosted a small party with the local elite. Part of my discussion with the Governor revolved around my belief that with forthcoming growth in Asia, and other major trends involving high-end skills, Cayman was certainly in the position of losing its luster and standing in the global money race.

My keynote was open, honest, aggressive, and blunt – if the financial industry didn’t align itself to the fast changes occurring in the industry with new investment products, new technologies, dramatic new business models, and more, it might find itself losing the race to global financial dominance. Later press coverage showed that I certainly caught some attention — and that my message resonated with the Governor.

To set the scene, the best and the brightest from both Cayman’s private and public sectors gathered at the Ritz-Carlton to hear presenter after presenter looks into their crystal balls to predict the future of the Cayman Islands. Each year Fidelity Bank sponsors this event, bringing in distinguished speakers from overseas.

Of particular interest to your editor were the words—and the AK-47 speed at which they were uttered—of Jim Carroll, a chartered accountant from Canada who now bills himself as a “futurist.” Carroll makes a tidy sum sharing his knowledge and insights with large corporations and audiences throughout the world.

Carroll believes—and certainly convinced many in the room — that the global velocity of change is affecting every area of our lives. He cautioned that if we don’t adapt to this super-synapsed new world, well, we all recall what happened to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

To illustrate the concept of velocity, Carroll projected on a large screen an image of a charging cheetah in full pursuit of one thing or another—our guess is a gazelle (lunch) — but it makes no difference to our tale . . .

By chance, after Carroll finished his dissertation, it was time for a coffee break, and we approached our good Governor, H.E. Stuart Jack, with a smile on our face and a question on our lips: “Do you see any irony between the cheetah on the screen and the fact that the national symbol of the Cayman Islands is a turtle?”

Today, Singapore, Dubai, and London have transitioned to take over the role of global economic powerhouses in terms of wealth, money, and banking. And the Cayman still finds itself playing a powerful role as the world’s sixth largest international banking center — but lagging behind the growth rates of other financial centers as most global wealth concentrates in Asia and the Middle East.

What’s the moral of the story? It’s easy – be the cheetah,  not the turtle. This holds true for any industry given the speed of change that now swirls around us. There is no time to be slow and graceful – there is only time to be swift, fast, and aligned with velocity!

And that’s a little bit of what I’m thinking about as I swim in the warm waters of Hawaii watching the turtles!