February 11, 1998

When you run out of gas

By CLIVE SHEARER
Management and Marketing

If the car you are driving runs out of gas, you get help, get gas and get back on your way. It's not hard to decide what to do. Yet business managers whose companies have run out of gas, or whose divisions or services have run out of gas have been known to:

• Watch other cars go by and pretend that their car is still moving.
• Then get depressed because no one else's car seems to have broken down.
• Polish and detail the car where it stopped so it would present a good image.
• Buy a new key for the ignition and see if the car starts.
• Pump the gas pedal and try the ignition eight hours a day hoping that one day it will start.
• Buy a new seat cover to make sitting in the car more comfortable.
• Push the car to its destination.
• Abandon the car for a while and then come back, surprised to see how it has deteriorated.
• Walk to buy gasoline and then pour it into the radiator instead of the gas tank.
• Get the staff to occupy all the seats in the car, rocking their bodies back and forth while exhorting them to rock faster and harder.
• Then insist that they all re-take their driving tests
• Form a committee to study other abandoned cars and find out why they won't run.
• Calculate the average gas used per trip, and develop a statistical model to prove that the car should have gone further.
• Complain that cars today are not what they used to be.
• Sue the manufacturer and the state highway department.
• Replace the engine.
• Cannibalize the car and reuse the parts on other cars that have gasoline.
• Buy a tow truck to tow the car to all future destinations.
• Sell the car because it won't run.

Most of us have been guilty at some time in our lives of actions like these. Sometimes it is worthwhile to take a step back and see what we are really doing. Are we acting in a panic, turning a blind eye to the situation? Do we listen to others and heed their advice? Perhaps today is the day to take an honest, practical and realistic assessment about where you are in your business and in your life and determine what needs to be done.

Previous columns:

• Working for the public sector, 01-14-1998
• 1998: Time to consolidate, 12-10-1997
• It's the little things that count, 11-12-1997
• Dealing with the difficult person, 08-13-1997
• Searching for the time to add value, 07-09-1997
• Don't wait for a fire to build a fire station, 06-11-1997
• Four reasons to stay with the firm -- or to leave, 05-14-1997
• THE DETERIORATION OF SYSTEMS OVER TIME, 03-12-1997