a very dangerous thing?

How does this happen? After roughly 20 years of trying, I had finally trained myself to smear my body with sunscreen before going outdoors to block those lethal rays that everyone warned would lead to certain skin cancer.

Eighty percent of skin damage from the sun, they've been telling us, happens before age 18. If that's true, then quite candidly, I'm screwed. Beaches in the summer as a youngster, followed by 10 years as a lifeguard in the 1970s (with the notable absence of sunscreen) set the stage for what I'm now assured will inevitably be melanoma.

Then, it happened. I opened the Sunday paper on May 29 and a headline leaped right off the page: "Sunscreen limits body's ability to generate vital Vitamin D." Though no one disputes the dangers of overexposure to the sun, it now appears that underexposure significantly inhibits the human body's ability to generate Vitamin D, one of those chemical "essentials" that cannot be replicated in a pharmaceutical factory.Without it, we risk succumbing to dangerous and deadly ailments like lymphoma and cancers of the prostate, lung and, ironically, the skin. To sum it up: overexposure to the sun can indeed lead to skin cancer, but aggressively blocking the sun's rays puts us at even greater risk of some even more dangerous diseases.

Why have I just dumped all this info into a column for a logistics business magazine? Largely because just days after reading the story, I interviewed Amy Carovillano of The Container Store (this month's DC VELOCITY Thought Leader) and was reminded once again that one of the most dangerous things we can do in business and in life is blindly accept the "conventional wisdom."

Carovillano has a rather unusual background for a logistics VP, having come to the job with a double major in biocHemiätry and microbiology. But that's OK. There's a lot about The Container Store that strays well outside the bounds of conventional practice. For instance:

• While buyers for other national retail chains wolf down low-cost goods from China, The Container Store imports less than half its merchandise. And of the goods it does import, the vast majority come from Europe.
• While most companies have taken to shipping goods out of their DCs in frequent small loads, almost all (95 percent, to be exact) of The Container Store's outbound shipments are full truckloads.
• At a time when most companies are sinking cash into their human resources departments, The Container Store operates without one. Why? "If you assume that your people are your resources, who knows better what they need to succeed than their direct manager?" Carovillano responds.
• While the rest of the world scrambles to be the first to use the hottest new technology, the folks at The Container Store stay above the fray. As Carovillano notes: "Part of our challenge has been to remain focused on what is right for our business and not to become distracted by the latest technology. We need to make sure that it is appropriate for The Container Store and protect our brand."
• While everyone else seems hell bent on aggressive growth, The Container Store makes a point of containing its growth. During its 27-year history, the company has grown at an average of 20 percent annually. It could be more much more but the company is determined to cap its growth so as not to get ahead of itself. As Carovillano notes: "We don't want to lose control of our culture and our brand."

And what a special culture it is. Named for six years in a row to Fortune magazine's list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For," The Container Store boasts one of the lowest turnover rates in the logistics field. So what else can we conclude but this? Whether it's about sunscreen or a company culture, a little conventional wisdom can be a very dangerous thing.