Horse Sense

A friend recently pointed out a terrific article by Jim Stovall posted at http://timmaurer.com/2012/01/16/horse-sense/.  Here’s an excerpt:

Recently, I was reading about draft horses which are very large, muscular animals that, throughout history, have been used for pulling great loads and moving very heavy objects.  A single draft horse can pull a load up to 8,000 pounds.  The strength involved in this is hard to imagine.  So then we can speculate what would happen if we hooked up two draft horses to a load.  If you instantly thought two draft horses could pull 16,000 pounds if one draft horse can pull 8,000 pounds, you would be wrong.  Two draft horses pulling together cannot pull twice as much as one.  They can actually pull three times as much.  The two draft horses that can each pull 8,000 pounds alone can pull 24,000 pounds working together.

The horses are teaching us a very clear lesson in teamwork, but they still have more to teach us.  If the two horses that are pulling together have trained with one another and have worked together before, they can’t just pull three times as much working together as they can by themselves.  The two trained horses in tandem can actually pull 32,000 pounds, which is a load four times as heavy as either of the horses could pull by themselves.

The powerful lessons that these magnificent draft horses can teach us involves not only teamwork but coordinated and trained collaboration.  No one lives or works alone as the proverbial island unto themselves.

What a great example of synergy!  We are often so motivated to do things by ourselves and for ourselves that we fail to seize the opportunity to work together with others to achieve something we simply could not do alone.

One of the amazing joys of being a business coach is to help business owners achieve something they could not quite accomplish alone.  It comes about through trust, collaboration, coordination of effort, and acceptance of step-by-step progress.  Business owners who seek assistance increase their odds of success.  All it takes is a little horse sense!