Jeff Bezos's great passion is space. In December 2021, he fulfilled a dream by taking a suborbital flight on the New Sheppard. A slightly expensive passion 💰 (compared with cycling or cooking 😂) whose modest barriers to entry make it something several multi-billionaires share (the Bezos, Musk, Branson).
But what struck me about Jeff's space company, Blue Origin, is its motto, represented by the image above showing Earth, two 🐢🐢 and space.
At the bottom is the Latin phrase: “Gradatim Ferociter”.
Translated into English as: “Step by Step, Ferociously.”
It is a motto I love because it values the journey.
Bezos says:
"Basically, you cannot skip steps. You have to put one foot in front of the other. Things take time; there are no shortcuts. But you want to take those steps with passion and ferocity".
The tortoise 🐢 is Blue Origin's mascot, recalling Aesop's fable... in which the tortoise, "slow and steady", beats the hare and wins the race.
In the same vein, Tolstoy's phrase is etched in my mind:
“Without haste, but without respite.”
Applied to the extremely dynamic digital business world, it suggests to me that sometimes we need to stop, avoid turning speed into hysteria, and do things one step at a time.
We could call it active patience 😉