A lesson from rush hour.

This morning, the crazy traffic downtown showed me something that will be very helpful for my job.

I've actually enjoyed my 5 mile, 25 minute commute to the office so far. You've probably heard by now that Minneapolis got a ton of snow over the weekend. The roads are fine now, but there's so much snow that there is generally one less lane on many major roads that have heavy traffic during rush hour. This makes for a much longer commute.

Traffic had just started to pick up a few blocks from the office. I was trying to watch the cars in my lane up ahead to see how packed it was, when suddenly the car in front of me hit their brakes.

Luckily the roads were clear and I stopped in time. I needed to both watch far ahead of me to make sure I was going in the right direction, and immediately in front of me to ensure I didn't crash into some one.

And so it is with operations. The ability to focus on the task at hand is obviously essential, but it is also important to be heading in the right direction as I work. The other day I found myself updating contact information on some forms, when I realized that we wouldn't need the forms for several weeks, and I had quite a bit to do that moment for a conference.

This sort of reminds me of a quote I heard back in the B-School: Climb the corporate ladder. Just make sure your ladder is up against the right wall.