“Build to last” “ Build to adapt” the way ahead.
Have you ever heard of Choluteca Bridge?
I hadn’t heard of the bridge until recently. It’s a 484 metre long bridge over a Choluteca river in Honduras in Central America. The bridge on the river Choluteca was a gift to the people of Honduras from Japan in the year 1996 (though an older one had existed since 1930s).According to extreme environmental conditions of the region, the Japanese ensured the quality of construction, the reliability and the engineering were all best-in-class.
It was built to withstand the hurricanes and high winds plaguing the region. In short, the new bridge was built to last.
The bridge lasted, indeed. In 1998, the massive destruction wrought by Hurricane Mitch changed the course of the river itself
There was a 75 inches of rain in four days equivalent to what they had received in last 6 months,7000 people lost their lives. All the bridges in Honduras destroyed and it remain unaffected. But the trouble was the road leading to it and the road leaving both swept away and it no longer flowed under the bridge. Overnight – as it were – the new bridge suddenly became irrelevant and useless.
But the lesson from the Choluteca Bridge is more pertinent for all of us in today’s scenario. As the world is changing in many ways, we may have never imagined. The Choluteca Bridge is horrifying allegory or a terrific example that what can happen with our careers, our Businesses, our lives. As world is getting transformed, we should always be ready to adapt a change, after all change is the constant thing in the world.
Whenever you look at your career, think twice before you take one more course to become an expertise in a particular area or before spending money on refurnishing your old office, thinking of opening more branches in every nook and corner of the country? Think again. It all might soon become redundant.
We all are focusing on building the strongest, most sophisticated product or service without thinking of possibilities that the need could vanish, the market could change. The challenge for us is that we get focused on creating the best solution to a given solution by forgetting the problem itself might change. In a nutshell, we focus on the bridge and forget the possibility that the river could change the course.
“Build to last” might have been popular mantra but “ Build to adapt” is the way to go.