The YouSendIt Blog

Having driven down a few highways you’ve experienced a wide variety of traffic conditions – including a few traffic jams.  Riding my motorcycle through those same conditions, perhaps taking a few more risks, driving a little faster, I might arrive somewhat sooner.  I will however, arrive alone. Driving my car I can bring some friends.  A team.  The way I can travel might be more limited, but it is arguably safer and certainly easier to bring more with me.  We might even get some work done on the way.  It’ll certainly be less lonely, and I’ll have help when we arrive at our destination.  Slower perhaps, but still very effective. Let’s lead a few cars – or better yet a caravan – a convoy of cars, bike, vans, perhaps a few big trucks.  If my desire is that this group arrive at roughly the same time, at exactly the same place, then the rules are VERY DIFFERENT.

I must stop thinking about passing the next car, or getting around the slowpoke in the left lane.  Now I must consider the downstream impact of passing someone.  Down my chain of vehicles, will we all be able to pass?  Do we have enough room, time, skill, and power to get by that old lady in the volkswagon?  Do we need to stop at the next fuel station – can we last another 20 miles?  The complexities of navigation, communication, resourcing, and capacity really start to become important. Now consider each vehicle as a part of your company.  From motorcycle to semi-tractor, individual contributor to cross-functional business teams, we can begin to relate to the complexities of driving businesses of differing sizes through differing obstacles.  We use this analogy to look at how different the capabilities are between a startup and a large corporation.

We can imagine what it’s like to lead each different category of car through the convoy to the destination – and how important process, thought, vision, mission, and communication become to a bigger org.  We see how important it is to get on the same GPS navigation system (can company direction actually be that literal?). Although there may not be a real GPS for navigating business growth, you might be able to use this analogy to better understand the mechanics involved with driving business (pun intended!) and therefore perhaps more accurately drive your own vehicle (whatever that may be) successfully through to where it is that YOU want to arrive.

by Erik Cummings, Sr. Manager of Operations and IT