Looking Forward

When I was 18 I spent a summer as the assistant engineer at a boy’s camp. One of my jobs was to help drive the huge barge we used to bring in food and campers.

As you can see, my boss was driving and looking forward and I was watching the barge and tugging on the lines if it strayed off course.

And hopefully that is how it should be in any business. The leader is keeping the company on course, looking out for rocks and watching the horizon for what’s new. 

Unfortunately, all too often, leaders, driven by the quest for earnings and production are focused on the barge and not looking over the bow. They are constantly making tweaks to the current course, making sure that quality is high and production continues unchecked and may fail to see what is out on the horizon.

In my new book, Disruption OFF, I talk about the need for today’s companies to run both marathons and sprints. The Gartner Group calls it Bi-modal management. The marathon is production and the sprint is keeping up with change. 

The CEO of Panera Bread said, “In many companies the delivery muscle is much stronger than the discovery muscle”. We get very, very good at production and forget to think about what’s next.

Reading Disruption OFF will give you a good sense of what’s coming next and let the assistant engineer focus on the barge.