This content was created by Tamsen Webster. This content was uploaded by Tamsen Webster. This is a YouTube video titled "The Red Thread of UPS (United Parcel Service) - EP006" (created March 14, 2017). The excerpt is a short dialog from a talk/presentation in which Speaker A explains the concept of a "red thread"—an organizing principle for solving problems—using UPS's practice of minimizing left turns to reduce wait time, accidents, and improve delivery efficiency. Speaker B asks a brief clarifying question. The speaker labels are generic (SPEAKER A / SPEAKER B) and no specific presenter name is provided in the excerpt; metadata identifies the item as a YOUTUBE piece with an associated thumbnail.
Sometimes people worry that a red thread could become binding or constricting, but I see it as a way to wrap yourself around an old problem in a new way.
How?
Let's take a look at the red thread of Brown. Most of us know UPS, United Parcel Service. Most of us know it because we get packages from them all the time. They are in fact the world's largest package delivery service. So their job, their red thread, is to get something from here to there as fast, efficiently as possible. Now, how do they do that? Well, you would rightly assume that they figure out what's the best route. How do I— what's the shortest distance from here to there? But what was surprising for me to discover was that in finding the shortest route, there's something very unique about UPS and their drivers. What's that? They don't turn left, or at least they don't turn left very often. That may sound strange to you. You might say, well, turning left, that's a great way to get through a maze, but not necessarily the fastest and best way to get a package from here to there. But UPS found out instead that in fact it was. So let's stop and think about that for a minute. UPS's main goal is to get something from here to there as fast as possible. That's the problem they solve. But they believe to their core that the best way to do that, the most efficient way to do that, is to make sure that it's efficient in every way. In other words, it's not just fast, it's not just the shortest route, but that they're also looking at things like how do we minimize wait times? How do we minimize the likelihood that a driver might get in an accident? What happens when they take that broader look is that instead of just saying, let's look at what on paper is the shortest distance, they start to look at all sorts of other things. So their red thread helps them instead challenge some of the assumptions about what's the best way to do that. And when it came to taking left turns, If you think about it, you have the same experience that they started to notice. And yes, their software started to notice. But if you drive in a country where we drive mostly on the right side of the road, a left-hand turn means that you have to do a couple things. One, it usually means you have to wait. You're waiting for oncoming traffic to pass. So that wait is wait time that UPS doesn't want. The second thing is that by crossing oncoming traffic, you dramatically increase the chances that you are going to have an accident, which not only is not a good thing, but it also obviously adds to time if an accident actually happens. So this is what UPS saw. And rather than have their red thread say, this is how we do things every time, By understanding, and you can do this too, by understanding what are the component parts of why you do something, it's not only what you do, but why you do it and how, it allows you to remix things and see things in a different way. It in fact allows you to wrap your red thread around an old problem in a new way, or take a new solution and apply it in a new way entirely. So that's the thing that I want you to take away today, is that the Red Thread isn't about saying, "This is what you do all the time in every way ever." It's about saying, "Why do I want to do this? How do I typically do this? What problem does that solve?" And when the results aren't what you're looking for or there's a gap between where you want to be and where you currently are, look at each of those components and say, Is there a different way I can put them together? Is there a different way that I can wrap this around the problem I want to solve? So that's the red thread of Brown. How are you going to use your red thread in a new way?
