Upgrading Tangible and Intangible Infrastructure

Changing Cars on a Moving Train -

This particular assignment involved a company that had grown rapidly. Its tangible and intangible infrastructure was maxed out—they had outgrown both their facility and their systems. Tensions were running high and some people had reached the breaking point and left the company.

The physical challenges were the easiest. The search and move to a new site took, from beginning to end, seven months. With more space, they had room to do what they needed to do. There wasn’t a lot of adjustment needed.

But the intangible infrastructure was harder to change. Even though the systems (software, hardware and business processes) did not meet the needs of the business, they were familiar. And nobody wanted to change when the company continued to operate (thankfully) at higher and higher revenue levels—certainly not an over-taxed staff that already had too much to do. But it was the correct decision.

It was only later, after we had nearly reached the end of the assignment, when we came up with the train analogy. But in retrospect, we realized that it was a good description of what we had helped them do—replace their systems bit by bit, one car at a time. It was never a drastic enough change to necessitate stopping the train, but significant enough that (when it was all over) there were new buildings, software and processes to replace the old ones. The new changes meant the train was prepared to handle an even faster speed going forward. -  Mary Adams  2007