One of my favorite moments from the past few months of script writing appears in a video that we are wrapping post production on right now.
A Director of Operations at a manufacturing firm describes the particular process that his shop utilizes as “the relentless pursuit of reducing lead time.” The relentless pursuit. It’s vivid, no? It captures something, something important. As a storytelling tool, it does more than simply describe a particular manufacturing process to an audience, it reveals character. Of this process, of this man, of this company.
They will not sit back and tell you that their work is the fastest possible, no. They’ll tell you that they will never stop striving to get better. They will eternally chase this relentless pursuit.
It’s a tiny fraction of the video. A few seconds out of nearly six minutes of story and images. But, for me, it’s the great takeaway.
I talk about story, I talk about content, I talk about communication and audience. Calls to action and results. This moment is what I talk about when I talk about Truth. A glimpse behind the curtain. You wouldn’t write this moment on a website. You wouldn’t use “The Relentless Pursuit” as an email subject line (well, I would. I likely will. But you might not.) But there it is. An admission. We are not where we want to be yet, not as good, not as fast. But, we never stop working towards it. And you can relate, can’t you? If it weren’t for these relentless pursuits, we’d never start our own businesses, and we certainly wouldn’t keep doing it, day after day, project after project.
This project will wrap soon, and the next one, and the next one. And the relentless pursuit of Truth continues. Have a relentless pursuit of your own? Want to share? Call me anytime. . .
