We have all heard that an oil tanker or large container ship cannot change direction very quickly. In fact, it often takes them several miles to change their direction. This is because these vessels have a lot of mass. The more mass an object has, the more energy is required to change direction.
Mass in business can be bad. Mass means that you can not quickly respond to changing conditions. With the rapid technological advancements in today’s world, conditions are changing much more quickly than ever before.
In the business world, this concept of mass comes in a variety of different forms such as long-term leases, staff, and inventory. The more mass your business has, the less ability it has to pivot and take advantage of changing conditions.
As a former sailor in the United States Coast Guard, I always love using what I call sea stories to explain business concepts. In that vein, here is a sea story to help convey how having mass in business can be a bad thing.
While we often hear swashbuckling stories of famous pirates with their hair on fire and sporting large cutlasses, what is not often part of the story is that pirate ships were most often much smaller vessels than the merchant vessels they attacked.
Since they were smaller, they could sail faster, sail closer to the wind, sail in shallower water, and of course change direction far faster than the merchant ships they were going to plunder. As a result, the low mass of pirate ships allowed them to become a disruptive force to trade routes because they were able to avoid the guns of man-o-war ships more aptly and could easily outmaneuver and overtake the heavy merchant ships.
A small business owner needs to think more like a pirate. If you have less mass and you make mistakes, it is much easier to fix those mistakes. Moreover, their small size and less mass make small businesses much agiler compared to their bigger competitors.
The real lesson for the small business owner is to operate lean and mean, leaving as many options open as possible. Good examples of operating a lean and mean business include using contractors vs. hiring employees, leasing vs buying equipment using co-working spaces rather than signing a long-term lease and looking for ways to store less inventory. The list goes on and on. In short, being bigger is not always better.
How can you shed mass and think more like a pirate?
