CeCe and I are driving in from the Fraser River Valley area to the rental car return at Vancouver Airport in heavy traffic. What should have been a 2-hour drive has turned into 4 hours of stressed filled stop and go. Five days earlier, we had rented a car in downtown Vancouver to enjoy some scheduled vacation time fly fishing and hiking, which happen to be our favorite things to do together. Our rental car is practically brand new and loaded with technology, including a GPS.
We are right at the airport but can’t seem to locate the rental car return. We even drove through rental car returns for the companies on-site at the airport but to no avail. And now we are heading back out away from the airport, so I stop to put the rental car return address into the GPS but it loops us around and takes us back to the airport. I’m getting more and more frustrated and have entered this address three times and made this loop twice. Did I mention traffic is terrible?! CeCe, in a very calm voice says, “Joey, pull over and erase everything out of the GPS, all previous destinations.” “That’s not going to do any good!” “Please try it,” she pleads. Okay, I finally oblige.
BINGO! As I put the address back in, it gives us a location just 3 minutes away. Easy drive over to the rental drop off and now we are sitting at our hotel restaurant having a nice glass of wine and discussing our early morning flight. After five days of glorious relaxation, I must say these last five hours have been stressful and filled with uncertainty.
How is this different from the traffic we see in our business world today? It’s not, and we are going to continually have to deal with unexpected traffic, fuzzy directions, uncertainty and stress of doing things we haven’t done before. Listening to CeCe’s advice to pull over and reset can be a difference-maker for our journey. What is our destination and direction? What factors are causing us uncertainty, and how can we clear our GPS? We will have to alter our course from time to time to be successful in the future. Collaborating always leads to better answers and outcomes.
