Infrastructure Makes a Difference

Many bloggers like to create controversy with their writing. It’s easy to be negative and destructive. It’s easy to destroy and very hard to build. My preference is to try and build.

I’ve had the Business Week article entitled “The Trouble with India” and been reluctant to comment on it. I have a global readership and to pound on some country for their deficiencies seems pretty petty given all the stuff my country has done in the last six years.

But infrastructure makes a difference to business and how able Cubicle Warriors are able to perform their work.

It’s not just India. In February, I had a wonderful time in Costa Rica for my Amateur Radio hobby, spending eleven days there and having a wonderful time.

What struck me about Costa Rica is that here is a great country with a lot of amenities, but still lacking in a lot of infrastructure that we here in the United States simply take as given.

Simple things. Like the fact that Costa Rica doesn’t have addresses. Really. You have to know where you are going without them. Maps consist of Global Positioning Systems and your ability to see where you are in a GPS environment.

Things like knowing the part you need for your car, but having to visit 2-3 different auto parts stores to see if they have the part and then the one that does asking you to bring in the bad part so that they can ensure the catalog number is matching the physical characteristics of the part in question. And, no, your mechanic doesn’t do that — you have to do the work for the mechanic.

The lesson I got out of all of this is that it takes a lot more time to do things without an infrastructure set up for business to get business done.

“Crumbling roads, jammed airports, and power blackouts could hobble growth” is how the India article characterizes the country.

We forget how much is there in the United States to enable seamless business processes. It’s not true everywhere. Management forgets that. Cubicle Warriors suffer for the lack of vision.

Scot

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