Festina Lente: Hurry Slowly
From fables to historical figures, from business leaders to athletes, all the greats say the same thing: to accomplish anything doesn’t mean making a single quantum leap but consistently moving step by step.
It turns out there’s a classical Latin phrase to describe this fundamental truth: festina lente, literally “hurry slowly.” Employed by the first Roman emperor Augustus, the phrase was later adopted by the businessman and politician Cosimo I de Medici, praised by the philosopher Erasmus, eluded to by Shakespeare, and turned into the popular fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” by la Fontaine.
In a certain sense, it’s about how long you can tolerate the intolerable. Proceeding on a methodical plan often doesn’t feel very satisfying in the moment. In a world of social media where we only ever see the successes and the only things in business that make the news are the enormous capital raises (and the catastrophic failures), we really should be reading what’s quieter: the entrepreneurs who are struggling, because that’s where the real progress is. If you’re executing on a well-thought out plan, the best thing is to continue. So keep going because, as we know, the tortoise crawling forward inch by inch eventually beats the hare.
In another sense, the phrase also means that each little step has to be taken with urgency. Take marathons, for example. Now I might question the sanity of someone who chooses to run a marathon, just as a marathon runner might question the sanity of someone who decides to become an entrepreneur. But what’s shared is that there’s a goal that you want to reach. And you can’t just wish yourself to the finish line; at each step, you can’t just meander, you have to move with full force toward your goal.
Since Roman times, the phrase festina lente has been symbolized by a dolphin wrapped around an anchor. We live in a world of sharks, where to achieve success, the fastest path would seem to be to go on Shark Tank and compete for glory. But at Tavern we do things differently. The success of one person doesn’t have to come at the expense of another. We aren’t promoting a culture of sharks, but creating a community of dolphins. Dolphins working as a pod can scare off a great white shark. We look for two qualities in prospective members: the first is that they’re serious about what they’re building, and the second is that they have a positive-sum mindset. Together, we can achieve more than any one of us can alone, and we do it step by step.
Thanks to Madeleine Cahn for finding the phrase and helping edit.
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