Sometimes You’ve Got to Climb a Tree

I can’t remember where this story comes from, but it illustrates a great point. A small group of people found themselves on a deserted island. They spent all of their time foraging for food, trying to invent ways off the island and fighting with each other. What they didn’t do was explore all of their options. As it turned out they were not on a deserted island at all. They were simply on one beach of a very inhabited island. Had someone thought to climb a tree and look around they would have discovered that civilization existed several hundred yards away.

Our organization has developed step by step over the last 36 years. Most of our promotions have come from within the organization and our leadership team has been very stable. While this has many advantages it also comes with its own limitations. With a few notable exceptions, we haven’t made significant operational changes as we have grown revenues by 800%.

Recently I was made aware of a practice in our company where we issue Purchase Orders by computer, print them out for processing then scan them back into our computer system. This system was developed years ago and has been tweaked over and over with a goal of making it more efficient. Only when a fairly new employee was asked about her experience with Purchase Orders at another company was the silliness of our system brought to light.

In other words, only after the tree was climbed the system was looked at from a totally different perspective. This “tree climbing” process was repeated recently when our people toured one of Amazon’s local warehouses. What an opportunity! Amazon is arguably the most sophisticated distribution company on the planet. Don’t be surprised when you see numerous exciting advancements in our warehouse beginning in the very near future.

At Tom’s we have always prided ourselves on doing things the right way. In most cases our business practices are superior to those used by our competitors. But it would be arrogant and shortsighted to think that improvements are not possible.

Our tendency has always been to make improvements by tweaking existing policies and practices, but there comes a time when overhauls are needed. Now that our leadership team is developing more skills and working together, it is a great time to consider meaningful upgrades. Change just for the sake of change is never a good idea, but if someone is doing something innovative, we would be foolish not to evaluate the idea then figure out a way to improve on it. 



Smart people can always come up with new ideas, but no one is smart enough to think of everything. One of our jobs as leaders is to look outside our comfort zones for new and better ways of doing things. If your comfort zone keeps you from seeing what the world has to offer it might be time for you to climb a tree.