On the Phalanx website and on our business cards, we’ve prominently displayed the following phrase from Archimedes: “Give me the place to stand and I will move the world.” Archimedes of Syracuse lived during the third century B.C.; he was a brilliant mathematician, engineer, scientist, and inventor. His inventions changed the world, and in his time, even struck fear into the heart of Rome herself. Although he is credited for having invented a method of determining the volume of an object, the Archimedes Screw, the Claw of Archimedes, and possibly even a heat ray, it is his work on the lever we’re focusing on.
“In physics, a lever is a rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to multiply the mechanical force (effort) that can be applied to another object (load).” So depending on where the fulcrum is placed and how long the lever is, very little effort may be required to lift a very heavy object. With this in mind, Archimedes’ statement makes perfect sense. If you have a place to stand, you can literally move the world.
Your business is your lever, your place to stand is determined by the products, people, and tools at your disposal. With a better product and better tools, you will find yourself further away from the fulcrum and thus require less effort to move your world. In contrast, having a poor product or tools will require more effort to effect change. Where do you stand?
We know of a company who has a great line of products and a great team of employees to match, and they are in a very strategic position to take their still growing industry by storm. The problem, however, is in the tool they had built by an outside vendor (not Phalanx). This tool is used by all of their offices to update products, manage customers, and process all their transactions. There are three big problems with the tool: 1) it was created using an outdated technology which very few people know or understand; 2) it was implemented very poorly; 3) it was never completely finished.
In spite of having so many positive things going for it, this company has found itself spending more and more resources trying to maintain a broken tool instead of moving the world. Each time an improvement is added to the system, other areas end up broken. The system is so brittle and so intertwined within itself that the smallest change affects numerous areas across the application. Now, rather than risking changes to the tool, the company is settling for “status quo”, which one great communicator defined as, “…Latin for ‘the mess we’re in.’”
Does this story sound familiar? Does your system, product, tool set, and infrastructure support your business, or are you exerting more and more effort to move your world? Can your business flex with the winds of change, or are you hoping for a gentle breeze? If you have concerns about any of these questions, contact Phalanx. We’d love the opportunity to learn about your business and partner with you to take it to the next level. Even if all you need is a little breathing room to get your strategy back on track, give us a call.
You can move the world, you just need a place to stand.