We seldom get an opportunity to question the “conventional wisdom,” but when we do we often find some of the most widely held assumptions are really quite false.
A recent event gave me the chance to challenge this conventional wisdom. One of our company’s investors requested I get a confirmation form signed by one of our clients. The form was simply a confirmation of address and phone number — no big deal. However, since the client wasn’t aware of this form, I thought I would phone her first, explain the document, ask her to sign it and fax it back to me. Again, no big deal.
It was a Tuesday when this process began but despite repeated calls and voice mail messages left, I got no return call. Wednesday was similar — numerous calls but no calls back from the client. Thursday started off on a positive note as she called me early in the morning and I explained to her what had to be done. Again, no big deal and she promised to sign and fax it back to me later in the day.
By the end of the day no such form had arrived. I started calling again on Friday morning, and managed to connect on my fourth call. She apologized for forgetting to send the form and promised to send it right away. A few hours later, the form did arrive, but due to a technical glitch somewhere, only page one of four pages arrived on my machine. By now Friday had run out of time, so I was forced to wait until Monday and start calling her again. Monday brought repeated calls, no returns and the usual frustrations, but by Tuesday I did finally have a signed copy of the four-page document. The second step should have been easy — scan and email the document to the investor. The operative words here are “should have been,” for more technical glitches occurred. It was not until Friday of this second week before we were able to confirm that the process was complete. In total I burned up 11 days on this task.
The conventional wisdom tells us that our advanced civilization with its modern technology has made our lives quicker, easier and more enjoyable. While this may be true on occasion, I gave thought to this so-called wisdom, and reached the opposite conclusion. I asked myself how I would handle this request if phones, faxes and scanners did not exist. Walking was out of the question, as the distances were too great, but not too far for a horse. So I concluded I would have ridden a horse to see my customer, got the form signed and then ridden the same horse over to the investor in order to drop off the documents. Finally I would ride the horse back to my office.
To do my calculations on time spent, I assumed my horse was somewhat of a “flea bag” soon destined to end his days at the glue factory, so his pace would be slow. Even with a slow pace, though, I calculated my total time spent using this alternative method at roughly 16 hours. In other words, after 200 years of continuous and rapid improvements in our science and technology, our “instant” communications method takes 11 days to accomplish the same thing our ancestors could do with a horse in 16 hours.
As the poet Ogden Nash noted, “Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.”
Brian McLeod’s horse must be getting worried about the glue factory because now the horse won’t return any of Brian’s calls either.
