the
innovative LEDGER
An e-Newsletter from The Innovative Edge™ Inc.
Vol.
10, No. 6 - June 2010
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Better Never Than Late
By Jeff Govendo
Periodically
I teach a class to graduate students on the subject of collaboration
among professionals. One of the slides I show highlights the distinction
between reactive vs. proactive problem-solving. It reads:
Reactive
– occurs when you are faced with a crisis or dilemma requiring
attention. Some kind of action must take place within a relatively
short time period.
Proactive
– occurs when an anticipated situation focuses your attention
and triggers a problem-solving process before it becomes a crisis.
Proactive
problem-solving might, in some cases, head off the need for reactive
problem-solving.
Several
days ago while teaching the course, I came to this slide and commented,
"It's probably fair to say that if BP had done a little proactive
problem-solving, they might well have headed off what is now the biggest
attempt at reactive problem-solving the world has ever seen!"
Heads
nodded in agreement.
It
is almost too easy and too obvious to draw upon the oil spill in the
Gulf for lessons relating to the timeliness and effectiveness of problem-solving.
But here we are, at 50+ days, and the promise of many more days of
gushing to come. With reports coming out of the region of livelihoods
lost (not to mention actual lives lost; 11 of them), a great city
threatened (again); of fishing grounds decimated and wildlife smothered
in the viscous stuff, one has to marvel at the lack of foresight
it took to allow this to happen. Not only by the companies who
built and operated the Deepwater Horizon, but by so-called government
regulators too.
No
one enjoys contemplating worst case scenarios. They're depressing.
People who bring them up are accused of being pessimistic, morose.
Worse, they require outlays of cash, while their chance of actually
happening remains statistically remote. They are counted as a needless
expense rather than an enhancement to the bottom line. To those
who pay homage to the almighty quarterly report, this is anathema.
Yet
right about now, it's probably safe to say that someone at BP is wishing
they had done a little more proactive problem-solving when this rig
was being built.
In
a previous edition of this newsletter, I wrote about the impact of
time pressures on the innovation capacity of teams in organizations.
Studies have shown that up to a point, the pressure of imposed deadlines
or outside forces on the ability of a group of individuals to do creative
problem-solving can actually enhance the process. Thus the well-known
adage, "Necessity is the mother of invention."
But
whoever coined that phrase didn't have anything like this in mind!
Over the past 6 weeks BP has attempted to come up with inventive
solutions under the most extreme time pressures imaginable. At this
writing the results have been marginal at best.
Somewhere
in the gap between irresponsible recklessness and total paralysis,
there is an area of balance in decision-making that allows for prudent
risk-taking and innovative action. Where that is depends on a
host of factors, unique to each company and each situation. Insurers
have developed the science of risk analysis around this. (Part of
what enabled BP's recklessness, in fact, is that they're self-insured;
they had no standards but their own to adhere to.)
The
oil spill is a disaster that absolutely didn't have to happen. As
we helplessly watch this tragedy unfold, our hearts go out to those
inhabitants of the region -- human and otherwise -- whose lives are
being irrevocably altered.
And
hope we as a nation can take a valuable lesson from this.
