Junk That Plane!
Sounds kind of silly, doesn’t it? Really, what would you say if after each commercial flight the aircraft was junked and replaced by another brand new one? You’d say that was crazy.
Yet sixty-two years after Sputnik it’s still a big deal that SpaceX has begun to re-use its rockets and space capsules. After six decades, we’re just grappling with the obvious notion that you shouldn’t throw away your space craft after a single use.
This new way of looking at things is called a paradigm shift, and here’s the the funny thing: When the new thinking arrives it’s considered bold and even a little dicey, but soon enough it seems obvious and sensible. Gee, why didn’t we think about that long ago?
The human race has a propensity to live in a rut. Even when the need for change is acute, we prefer to hide under a blanket, suck our thumbs, and whimper like little children. Change is too complicated, too scary, and too costly.
As a society we know, for example, that we are in very deep doo-doo with climate change, yet we still have politicians who claim the jury is still out, or that we really can’t afford such drastic measures as banning plastic straws.
Paradigm shifts typically occur overnight and don’t really hurt that much– we go to bed Imperial and wake up Metric, and after a little adjustment, life goes on and we’re mostly glad the change happened.
It’s in our professional and business lives that we need to embrace paradigm shifts. Offices used to be noisy, smoky places filled with prim ladies clacking away at manual typewriters with carbon paper and whiteout. Now those prim ladies’ daughters are doctors and engineers using advanced technology. And no smoke. One generation.
How about your business? Are you still trashing your rockets after one use?