I’m not a technologist by training. My grounding has always been in learning, leadership, and people development. Today I lead teams that implement ERP systems for SMEs, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s this: when work gets complex, analogies help. They cut through jargon. They make patterns visible. They help teams align faster than frameworks sometimes do.
One of my most useful leadership lessons came not from a strategy meeting, but from the gym.
I was doing squats, and as I lowered myself, I did what most of us instinctively do — I bounced slightly at the bottom. It feels efficient. You drop, rebound, and come up. My trainer stopped me immediately and said, “No bounce. Sit with control. Stand with speed.”
He explained that the bounce gives the illusion of power, but it’s actually a loss of control. You’re not holding structure — you’re borrowing momentum. And then he added something even more interesting: once you are stable at the bottom, don’t rise slowly. Stand with speed. If you try to come up too slowly under load, you actually spend more energy and increase fatigue.
That stayed with me — because I see the same pattern play out in ERP implementations all the time.
In the gym, the bounce looks energetic but signals instability. In ERP programs, there’s a similar illusion. Things move fast. Files circulate. Workshops conclude quickly. Reports get generated in multiple versions. Approvals happen early. Everyone feels busy. It looks like progress. But sometimes it’s just motion without control.
I believe there’s even a practitioner term for one version of this — data bouncing. It’s when the same data keeps moving back and forth between teams, between functions, between validation stages. Nobody fully rejects it, nobody fully owns it, nobody fully closes it. So it travels. Again and again. Each cycle takes time, drains attention, and quietly erodes confidence.
From where I sit as a leader, data bouncing is rarely just a data problem. It is usually a decision problem in disguise. A definition is unclear. Ownership is fuzzy. A trade-off hasn’t been accepted. A call hasn’t been made. The sheet keeps moving because the decision doesn’t.
That’s where the first half of my trainer’s instruction becomes a leadership discipline. Sit with control. In ERP terms, that would mean staying with the data and the process truth long enough for it to stabilise. Not rushing to closure just to keep momentum alive, not mistaking early agreement for real alignment, and not holding the position long enough for reality to surface.
But the lesson is incomplete if it stops there — because the second half matters just as much.
Stand with speed.
This is where many programs — and many leaders — get uncomfortable. We assume that if we have been careful in thinking, we must now be slow in execution. But that’s not how energy works under load. In strength training, once you are stable at the bottom of a squat, rising slowly is inefficient. Your muscles stay under strain longer. Fatigue builds. Form starts to shake. The instruction is to drive up with intent.
Execution in ERP is similar. Once decisions are made and definitions are settled, slow execution becomes costly. The longer the gap between decision and action, the more second-guessing creeps in. People reopen questions. The memory of why a choice was made starts fading. Exceptions begin to appear. Old habits quietly return. What was settled starts becoming “open for discussion” again.
I see this especially in SME implementations, where energy is not unlimited. The same people running the business are also supporting the transformation. If we drag execution out after clarity has been achieved, we don’t become safer—we become more tired. And tired organisations do not adopt systems well.
Standing with speed doesn’t mean being reckless. It means converting clarity into action while alignment is still fresh. It means moving from decision to configuration, from configuration to usage, without unnecessary delay. It means not hovering in that dangerous middle zone where we are no longer thinking deeply, but not yet executing decisively either.
What I’ve taken from the gym into my leadership work is a simple sequencing rule. Control first—speed second. Not mixed and not reversed.
Sit with the ambiguity. Sit with the disagreement. Sit with the data. Let it settle. Let truth show itself. That’s leadership patience.
Then stand with commitment. Stand with pace. Stand with a visible direction. That’s leadership energy.
No bounce on the way down. No hesitation on the way up.
I may not be a technocrat. But I’ve learned that whether it’s muscle or management, stability first and speed next is a pattern that holds remarkably well.
