They spotted me.

I could hear their leader barking out orders,

“Bravo Charlie – bogie 10:00, move!  Surround and terminate!”

What the…what’s going on?!  My two fellow combatants immediately ran away.  They were not up to a fight with these guys.

Before I knew it, I was all alone.

Being alone was bad enough, but by the time I thought through what had happened, what was happening, and what was about to happen, it was too late.  I had not moved from the position in which I was originally spotted.  They not only knew my location, but they had moved with such precision they now surrounded me.

I was behind a very large west coast cedar tree, which provided me with some cover, but any lateral movement made me wide open to their expert marksmen.  So I did what any cocky early twenties weekend warrior would do – I froze with fear.  I know, I know, I should have wheeled out from behind the tree with guns blazing, but I didn’t.

I’d like to say that I fought bravely and died quickly.  But it would be more accurate to say that I thought slowly and died quickly.  These guys we were fighting against knew how to keep moving forward as a unit, and we didn’t.  I got caught alone; I got caught standing still.

And now I was dead.  They simply confirmed their kill and kept moving forward.

It was the early 80’s and a group of my friends and I were playing this newly created war game known as Paint Ball.  We were in the woods of BC and just happened to be pitted against the reigning BC Champs.  These guys were serious weekend warriors.  Truth be told, they were a little odd, but they knew how to fight together.

They sure dispatched us with expert precision.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: if you want to live, keep moving forward.  And I learned that sometimes to move forward you need to move sideways and even backwards.

If I had kept moving, together with the rest of my fighting friends, I would have lived to fight another day.  Or at least I would have lived for more of the day.

Moving = life.  Standing still = death.

I believe this is not only a principle for success at Paint Ball, but it is a principle for leadership success as well.

If we are not intent on moving forward; if we do not keep pressing on toward a worthy goal that involves personal and corporate growth we will not flourish.  Not only that, if we think we can simply stay the same – maintain a holding pattern of sorts – we are sadly mistaken.  Maintaining a holding pattern, or being on cruise control, will inevitably result in losing ground, not holding it.

I thought I was safe where I was comfortable in a good hiding spot, but the enemy soon found me, surrounded me, and killed me.

If we choose to say in a safe, comfortable place personally, or in regard to how we are choosing or not choosing to lead, we will begin to die.  Leadership is like a muscle, if it is not exercised it atrophies (shrinks) and gets weaker and weaker until it has no strength left.

The reality is, if we are not disrupting our own comfort and convenience by choosing to learn and step out of our comfort zone, we will be disrupted by someone who is continuing to move forward.  Companies and leaders have a choice to either be ‘disruptive’ or be ‘disrupted’ by any number of market and human resource variables.

Moving forward involves taking risks, but they are far less dangerous than the risk of standing still.

As JFK said, “There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

If you think you can sit still in a comfortable place of hiding and continue to grow, you are fooling yourself.  Your ‘enemies’ (like complacency, arrogance, apathy, mediocrity and the like) have already begun to surround you to take you out and take you down.

Keep moving forward.