Of Bridges and Proactivity
Which is better? Correcting a problem after you've experienced it? Or, watching the dashboard for warning signs and taking corrective actions to avoid the problem in the first place? Obviously, the latter is better: Proactivity saves more time, money and, in some cases, lives, than reactivity. I grade the business world a "C" on being proactive. Government? Regretfully, it gets an "F."
Which brings us to the matter of the I35W bridge failure in Minneapolis, my hometown. Indeed, hindsight has all kinds of advantages that foresight lacks, and the catastrophe's cause will take a long time to determine. But the human and engineering disaster looks like a perfect example of reactivity trumping proactivity. A few years ago, inspectors judged the bridge "structurally deficient." They graded it on two scales: On a scale of 1 to 9, it earned a 4; and its structural integrity marks were 50 point out of a possible 120. In every school and class I've ever attended, those are failing grades.
Which brings us to the matter of the I35W bridge failure in Minneapolis, my hometown. Indeed, hindsight has all kinds of advantages that foresight lacks, and the catastrophe's cause will take a long time to determine. But the human and engineering disaster looks like a perfect example of reactivity trumping proactivity. A few years ago, inspectors judged the bridge "structurally deficient." They graded it on two scales: On a scale of 1 to 9, it earned a 4; and its structural integrity marks were 50 point out of a possible 120. In every school and class I've ever attended, those are failing grades.
The failure of this bridge, which I had used a few times every week for the past three decades, has provoked a lot of tortured semantic arguments about the meaning of structural deficiency. Yet this tragedy, as tragedies often do, is provoking a gross bulge of reactive actions by government and its custodial politicians. Think about it. How do you, in your business, or the representative that you elect to make large community decisions, operate? Poised to pounce when things go horribly wrong? Or, snooping for symptoms, digging below the surface to root causes and acting before a full-blown crisis explodes?
If transportation was your business and you read a report on a 40-year-old bridge, built to carry 40,000 cars daily and now carrying 140,000 cars each day, that graded it structurally deficient with a rating below 50-percent of where it should be, would that cause you to take action? Or, would you delay another few budget cycles? The answer is as obvious as it should have been when President Bush was handed a daily brief entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" one month before 9/11.
If transportation was your business and you read a report on a 40-year-old bridge, built to carry 40,000 cars daily and now carrying 140,000 cars each day, that graded it structurally deficient with a rating below 50-percent of where it should be, would that cause you to take action? Or, would you delay another few budget cycles? The answer is as obvious as it should have been when President Bush was handed a daily brief entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" one month before 9/11.
Here's the lesson we all need to keep learning: Throughout your day, be aware of symptoms, not just their negative results. It will save a lot of heartache in the long run. Whether government or business, whether it's bridges, airplanes or widgets, let proactive snooping to discover root causes ring across the land.
