What I learnt about running a business by waiting at the traffic lights?

Inspiration comes in form of hundreds of cars honking, speeding and sneaking around you

I like driving. I hate driving to work (and returning from it) because it usually coincides with the so-called “rush hour traffic”. It is ironic that it is called “rush hour” because nothing is actually rushing — neither the traffic nor the time.

Over the period of last few months, I have found a few patterns in the way people drive and behave, especially when they are approaching a traffic light.

In India, we have countdown meters installed at nearly every traffic signal in the major cities which display the number of seconds left for a light to turn its colour. So, when approaching a green light or waiting for one, you get a good sense of time it will take to turn red (or green), and this should be enough to take an informed decision to either adjust your speed appropriately (if you are running into a green light) or switch off your engine (if you are waiting at the red light). However, it seems taking that informed decision is not an easy decision to make…

It is not uncommon to see people changing lanes and shifting gears to ensure they pass through when the light is still green. So, the display timers that were installed to ensure smooth flow of traffic end up causing a bit of chaos.

Based on my observations, I have identified a few set of people who generally cause and contribute to this chaos:

1. Early To Panic: those who would have easily gone through the green signal — and when it is still green — but end up panicking in fear that they might not be able to and resort to unwanted acceleration and lane changing.
2. Closing Chokers: these are the set of drivers who would also have easily made it past the traffic signal but, somehow, conclude that they would not and slow down.
3. Irrational Aggressors: these are the drivers who would not have made through the current green signal. However, in their irrational exuberance or aggression, they hope to get past and accelerate unduly and, in most cases, dangerously.

What compounds this problem is that this behaviour is contagious and spreads pretty fast. So, a single “closing choker” is enough to trigger “panic” among those behind, and cause disorder, confusion and, sometimes, unfortunately accidents.

… and this is the same irrational behaviour many businesses exhibit nearly everyday …

If we draw a parallel between this behaviour on road and the way certain senior executives run their business, we will observe not much separates the two.

Let us extrapolate this a bit. Let us assume that going through a traffic intersection is similar to getting past a milestone in the business — could be securing a funding round, or breaking even or, maybe, getting to the IPO round. And the drivers are senior executives running their businesses to meet their respective milestones.

And our common observation is that the businesses (or even industries) that fail or suffer are ones where the men and women driving the companies make irrational decisions. They get unduly influenced by other companies around them and do not take cognizance of their own speed and position. So, while they might be well set to achieve their goals, they suddenly feel out that someone else might drive past them and that they might fail. So, they either change their lane (i.e. focus) or speed (i.e. momentum) and start making unreasonable choices.

Looking around us, we can certainly identify a few start-ups who should have but could not succeed because they were driven by people not with hope and zeal to succeed but with fear of failure.

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