My first car was a real dog, but a very cheap dog. A Chevrolet Vega two door hatchback I bought in 1980, developed during the early 1970s with an oil drinking habit because of a mismatched cylinder liner with a different metal engine block. I mean engine oil. So much so that I was always carrying a six pack of 10W30 in my trunk to replenish the dwindling supply inside the engine.
But that was only the beginning. Someone had hit the car while I was working on a program in the Department and knocked one of the head lamps out. I came back to find a police notice of a hit and run posted under my windshield. Too poor and ignorant to replace the lamp right away, for two months I learnt to drive with one scratchy, dusty headlamp and make hypotheses of the conditions of the road ahead - sometimes correctly, sometimes not so correctly. It was winter and 8 inches of snow are very forgiving to errant cars and the people of Minnesota develop a very tolerant attitude in winter to cars that run astray.
It is famously said that your headlamps may only show the way about 20 feet in front but you can travel coast to coast on just that vision. The critical assumption (one that we all tend to forget) is that the car is moving and that the driver is able to make course corrections based on what he/she sees and that the driver is prepared to risk embarking on a journey that becomes tangible 20 feet at a time. It also helps to have both lamps on.
As I was contemplating the distant memory of that Chevy Vega, I realized, too often in enterprises, our cars are standing still. Our headlamps are illuminating a fixed twenty feet around us. And we are smug in the knowledge that comes from our twenty foot cone of observation. When competitors revolutionize their business processes, their product lines or come to attack, they are often outside that 20 foot cone.
One way to extend the reach of the headlamps is to move the car. Take some risk, start some innovation. Like that Vega in Minnesota, some of these may wind up on a snow bank. But some of them will also take you to the destination. Bring in people who have lived outside the reach of your headlamps. Then listen to them. Believe them. Trust them for they have seen what you cannot validate with your own headlamps.
But that was only the beginning. Someone had hit the car while I was working on a program in the Department and knocked one of the head lamps out. I came back to find a police notice of a hit and run posted under my windshield. Too poor and ignorant to replace the lamp right away, for two months I learnt to drive with one scratchy, dusty headlamp and make hypotheses of the conditions of the road ahead - sometimes correctly, sometimes not so correctly. It was winter and 8 inches of snow are very forgiving to errant cars and the people of Minnesota develop a very tolerant attitude in winter to cars that run astray.
It is famously said that your headlamps may only show the way about 20 feet in front but you can travel coast to coast on just that vision. The critical assumption (one that we all tend to forget) is that the car is moving and that the driver is able to make course corrections based on what he/she sees and that the driver is prepared to risk embarking on a journey that becomes tangible 20 feet at a time. It also helps to have both lamps on.
As I was contemplating the distant memory of that Chevy Vega, I realized, too often in enterprises, our cars are standing still. Our headlamps are illuminating a fixed twenty feet around us. And we are smug in the knowledge that comes from our twenty foot cone of observation. When competitors revolutionize their business processes, their product lines or come to attack, they are often outside that 20 foot cone.
One way to extend the reach of the headlamps is to move the car. Take some risk, start some innovation. Like that Vega in Minnesota, some of these may wind up on a snow bank. But some of them will also take you to the destination. Bring in people who have lived outside the reach of your headlamps. Then listen to them. Believe them. Trust them for they have seen what you cannot validate with your own headlamps.
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