Love that Potential!

A long time ago I studied engineering, mechanical engineering. I loved the subject and the lenses it brought. It was and is about transformation, solving problems, creation, leverage, and making new things that work and making old things work better. Engineering teaches how to open the hood on what we observe and appreciate the many systems at play when something happens or doesn’t happen. Later on, when I studied business, the engineering lenses were very helpful again, but now I could apply the business lenses to the engineering world and, wow, I could really see great stuff happening.

I recall several lectures on the subject of energy, particularly the contrasts between potential energy and kinetic energy. Basically, potential energy is work that we’ve done (force stored in a bottle) that is in a state that can be used to work we want to do (make something go or move), kinetic energy. Some may bristle at this folksy definition, but it will do for now. The battery in our car has potential energy stored that can be unleashed to turn a motor to start our car. When the car is running, it turns a generator that sparks the plugs (so that we can use the potential energy in the fuel) and returns some energy back to the battery for storage. Our bodies do the same thing with what we eat. By the way, if we let the battery stand around long enough it drains and loses the potential energy inside (sort of leaks out slowly). All the potential is gone and has to be recharged or replaced. Use it or lose it.

The business lens is the same isn’t it? We hire, develop, train, build capability and skills, staff up, put money away, and buy all kinds of equipment and supplies, right? All of that has lots of potential. Why? We do so use it to start and run our processes, projects, and respond when necessary. We make it kinetic! In doing so, we trade the deliverable for another type of potential energy, money. The cycle goes on and on between potential to kinetic and then again, but not always. We tend to waste lots of kinetic energy in activity that doesn’t produce something. We also leave lots of potential underutilized, and if it goes too long before we use it, we may find it as useless as a dead battery.

So,

• Do we know how well we build our “potential energy” within the enterprise?
• Where is that potential stored? Is it available and convenient?
• How much potential is leaking out and becoming unusable?
• Do we buy or build too much potential? Do we know?

Living in Florida, we need to prepare for hurricanes. We store potential in batteries, fuel, food, even a generator. If you ask me where they are stored, I would have to show you, because they keep moving from potential to kinetic and replaced with fresh potential capacity. Otherwise, they will be of diminished value when we really need them.

Do we have storms in our enterprises?