Any environmentally conscious person will tell you that trains are one of the most efficient forms of transport. Thanks to the dedicated tracks, low friction, and large capacity, they can carry a lot of people with a limited amount of fuel. For the equivalent journey, a train’s emissions might be up to 97% lower. Though on British trains, the emissions of bad language might be high*.

You might be surprised then to hear me advocating for trucks over trains. But I do so only in the form of an analogy. Because while trains are super-efficient, I think your business ought to be more like a truck.

High Frequency Change

I’ve been returning recently to a lot of the thinking I did in preparation for High Frequency Change. Not least because it appears that the phenomenon of HFC has spread to more areas of our lives than it had reached when I wrote the book six or seven years ago.  But that’s a blog post for another day.

In the book, I talk about the tension between agility and optimisation. And the train/truck analogy is a nice way to illustrate it.

Goes like a train

Trains, as above, are super efficient. But they are so because they have been built for a single purpose, a single destination. They can go from A to B at the lowest absolute cost**. What they cannot do, without enormous investment, and a huge amount of time, is change their destination. In fact, the only control a train driver has is how fast or slow they get there.

Businesses that are super-efficient are often a lot like trains. They have been hyper-optimised for a single purpose, a single destination. The leaders of these businesses only have one lever in front of them, one choice. If things are going wrong, all they tend to be able to do is push the lever forward to make the train go faster. In extreme circumstances they might shed some weight as well. But ultimately, accelerating is their only option. Even if the station they’re heading towards is no longer there. 

These businesses tend to hit the buffers at high speed. 

Keep on truckin’

Think of a truck, by contrast. Trucks are, as already noted, less efficient. But the trade off for that lack of efficiency is a much greater degree of freedom, of flexibility. Based on new information, trucks can change their destination at any point. 

They might change their destination before they set off. If, for example, the price for the products they are hauling is better at a new destination than the one they were originally heading for. They might even change their starting point, and haul an entirely different cargo

Or, trucks can change direction mid-journey. If the satnav tells them there is traffic ahead, they can re-route.

Businesses that are like trucks are inherently less efficient. But in an age of high frequency change, efficiency isn’t the most important determinant of sustainable success. Agility is. 

Be more truck

This is why I am again telling lots of my clients to focus more on the agility of their organisation than its absolute efficiency. Readers of High Frequency Change, or Future-Proof Your Business, where I expanded on these ideas and gave more practical advice, will know that I believe organisational agility has three components:

1. An agile structure - what I call ‘Stratification’ in the book, an organisation designed around functional units separated into layers. The units can be reorganised like Lego bricks to build new propositions, add or drop costs, and integrate external services as required - or become external services in their own right

2. Accelerated decision-making - power pushed as far to the edge of the organisation as possible, good governance controls, and fast flows of information from edge to centre

3. Sound foresight practices - looking ahead as a core part of management activity at every level, with time and respect given to the importance of looking near term and long for opportunities and threats, and adjusting plans appropriately

Six years on from when High Frequency Change was published - and probably ten from when I started to form the ideas that went into it - I still believe wholeheartedly in this approach. In fact, I’d say that the events of the last few years have only reinforced its value. 

In short, be more truck.

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* I confess I keep abusing British trains, having not actually experienced a delay so far this year. But the stats speak for themselves. More than 5% are still cancelled, and even by the most generous measure, only 81.4% were on time. A stricter measure puts this at 62%.

** Though not, in the UK, from a passenger perspective, where a train ticket is significantly more expensive than the equivalent car journey and frequently, more than hiring a car and paying for the fuel. I still (usually) pick the train because someone else is paying. But for moving a family up and down the country, the car is a no-brainer and that is deeply sad and wrong.