Musings at Altitude

I visited Baton Rouge the last two days, spending some time with a very important partner and client, working on the next wave of revenue opportunities for us both.  After one day of very good meetings, I went to dinner with one of the executives, and we began talking about the business community in Baton Rouge.  I mentioned that I was having lunch the next day with the CEO of another partner of ours, and I talked about the struggles we were having in that particular partnership relationship.  I mentioned that the headquarters of our partner in the strained joint venture was up in Alaska and that the other partner was out of Europe.  When I mentioned the name of the CEO I was joining for lunch, the executive I was dining with said, “he’s a good friend of our CEO”.

I immediately thought about the butterfly affect, and how little things in one corner of the world could dramatically affect events thousands of miles away.  In this case, a tense relationship between two small companies headquartered in Alaska and Europe could realistically and adversely affect the partnering status of two, billion dollar companies working hard to do business together in Baton Rouge.

In today’s world where mobility is high and communications is ubiquitous, it shouldn’t really surprise me when I walk into a company 4,000 miles away from my headquarters in a very different industry and totally different geography from our operations and yet someone we do business with is very good friends with the leaders of that company being visited.

This just further reinforces the point that in today’s business environment, we need to peer intently into the future to see (if at all possible) the cascading affects of our actions.  But just like weather, the further out we get, the harder it is to see and predict.  Therefore we need to “what if” every business action we take and ensure we’re prepared for both the predictable and the completely unexpected consequence.  The process alone will make us a better company.  Who knows…we just might stop ourselves from being jerks at the absolute wrong time and instead be empathetic and compassionate people. 

Wouldn’t that be cool!