After 80 years of technology, would you believe that a 1930s car can beat a minivan on the mountain roads of Colorado?

I have been learning about cars for many years. My stepson is a skilled mechanic, plus my husband has been maintaining and repairing cars for my friends and I since I was in my early 20s. He’d take care of everything from oil changes (“Lorraine, don’t tell him I didn’t add oil until the dipstick didn’t register any”) to bodywork repairs resulting from the driver hitting an inanimate object.

Recently, I had the privilege of viewing an extensive private car collection with a small group of people. The collection featured muscle cars, Italian cars, and vintage, rare and small production cars. It was so much fun.

One of the unique cars in the collection was a 1930s roadster. The owner drives many of the cars and he and his wife have participated in multiple car rallies with this vehicle. What struck me most about this particular car was that while racing through mountain ranges in Colorado, it outran and outperformed a modern, North American or European minivan.

We have made tremendous strides with technology in 90 years. Think of the advances in medicine, our ubiquitous and proliferate handheld devices and all their apps, safety features on automobiles and autonomous vehicles. And yet, a car from the 1930s can outperform a 2018 minivan.

To me this says two things:

• Sometimes we are much slower to advance technology than we think we are.  (The capability and knowledge to build electric cars were readily available in the 1960s and we have made relatively little advancement in battery life.)
• And sometimes we discard our practices, processes, and knowledge of what worked in the past with an incorrect belief that new will always deliver greater profitability, better service, improved performance or increased revenues.

I always encourage clients to spend much more time looking through the windshield than back over their shoulders. But let’s stop periodically to consider what we know. What has worked in the past? What is working well today? Then chart a course into the future.

My clients accelerate their results – increasing profitability, leadership performance, innovation, and accountability. I would love to discuss how I might contribute to your success. Contact me today.

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© 2018 Lorraine A. Moore. All rights reserved. Permission granted to excerpt or reprint with attribution.