Donnerstag, 3. Januar 2013

Opportunities hide everywhere!

I deeply believe that almost every situation can be used to "get better" (by either learning something, getting you one step nearer to your goal or making you feel better). A day at work? If you don't get better, you missed the opportunity! Invited to a party? Talk to someone, maybe this person turns out valuable one way or another! Need to clean the kitchen? Think about turning on music and thinking about something nice and it might cheer you up.

The reason I am writing this is because of an event which happend during the holidays. Me and my spouse where visiting her parents and I got invited by her father and brother to join them visiting a Porsche exhibition. Not really into cars I was not sure if I should go mainly because I have enough stuff to fill free time but in the end agreed to the short trip.

I ended up spending the most interesting hours of the whole month at the exhibition. Cars aside there where so much information about the entrepreneurship Porsche and Piech put into their company that I spent almost all the time reading while all the other people looked at the cars.

I didn't knew about Porsches always looking for a company which would support his inventive talent and leaving the company when they got to restrictive (or would refuse to give him more money for his inventions). This is something not very common in Germany where employees tend to stick to a job for a very long time.

I also didn't know that the Porsche company started as a small consulting firm. It's inspiring how a few guys got into a marked with all those big players. How they created a car company out of nothing but some bright heads.

I was also very impressed by the approach about quality they chose back then. I think they did what today would be called "lean". They created prototypes, tested their assumptions and iterated very fast. In the beginning they also build one car for rally and as normal street car, meaning they could not skip on quality.

There where also some texts about how Porsche build a relationship with their fans (not customers), not simply selling a car but the "membership in a club of likeminded people". Isn't that what many companies dream of? Not having to deal with customers who complain and argue and rant but with fans who love you for what you are?

It's been a week since the visit and I still think about all this and it amazes me. It inspires me, not to build cars but to build something. To think about what I want to do, the way I want to work and how I can achieve this. And it reminded me to be open about every opportunity to learn something.

Opportunities hide everywhere!

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