Lessons From The Subway

By: John Dir
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:51
Print this article | Tell a friend | For publisher |

Rating:

 

In solving problems, I often recall a valuable lesson I learned while traveling the subway in Washington D.C. Some years back, a friend and I attended a large gathering of people from all over the country. The event had thousands of people packing the Washington mall. When it ended, my friend and I headed for the subway system to catch a ride back to the parking lot where our transportation home was waiting for us. As we entered the station, we followed the crowd toward the platform where hundreds of people were waiting for the next train to arrive at the station. People were packing into the area, milling around, and pushing to get down to the platform and toward the front. As we stood on the upper level, it was obvious that it would be a long while before we could make our way down to get where we wanted to go.

As my friend and I looked at the crowd, I noticed the platform on the opposite side of the tracks was practically empty. I grabbed my friend’s arm, told him to come with me, and headed toward the east bound platform.

“Hey, where are we going?’ my friend asked, “We need to get on the train going west.”

“I know,” I replied, “Just come with me, I have an idea.”

We quickly made our way down to the east bound platform, and soon got on a train headed east. As the doors closed, I told my friend why we had taken the wrong train. Since the crowds of people were all going west, I had a hunch we might have a better chance to board the train a few stops further down the line. As we got off the train at the next station, we discovered the hunch had been correct. At this station, there was almost nobody standing at the west bound platform. When the next west bound train arrived at the station, it was almost completely empty, and we got our pick of the seats. By the time we got back to where we had started, we were comfortably settled in, and prepared to complete the trip to our destination. As the doors opened where we had originally started, people packed in with standing room only until there was no more space in the car. As it turned out, we reached our stop long before others who had left at the same time we did.

This experience taught me how to look for ways around obstacles in other areas of my creative and working life. When others are completely focused on fighting for a place in the crowd, it is sometimes better to look for alternatives that might not seem like the right direction at the time, but ultimately leads to arriving at the intended destination with far less trouble and effort. Competing with others for a place on a crowded platform is not always the best way to go. The same holds true in business. If competitors are fighting to best each other with increasingly complex solutions, it might be time to look at simplicity as a way to stand out in the crowd. When other companies are competing to provide solutions from the top down, it might be time to look for approaches from the bottom up. Though this approach is not always successful, it is one way to be first in line for starting something new.

Article source: Expert Articles