ebola, business and quest for perfection

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“Health scares are classics of the politics of fear.

After a while they lose all force, except to distort medical priorities. Hundreds died of hospital-caught infections while ministers panicked over bird flu.

But what are we to do?

As with fear of terrorism, crime, poverty or common illness, we have to rely on authority to advise and warn us. When authority has a vested interest in alarmism, anarchy reigns.

We are at the mercy of the lobbyist, the spin doctor and the headline writer.”

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“My God!

The degree of incompetence on the part of the US Government and it’s subsidiaries such as the CDC is beyond the limits of imagination!”

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Commenter USAToday

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 “What are we going to do about this?”

………………..… nothing … we should do nothing.”

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Bruce McTague in a business meeting

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So.

This is about business and how businesses manage, or mismanage, exceptions.

This is about business and how authority is utilized <well & poorly>.

This is about competence, incompetence, doing and doing nothing.

And this will also be about Ebola and how the USA acted upon it’s first Ebola case.

Now. I wrote this maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago and then filed it in my draft folder. I admit. I hesitated using Ebola to make a business point. But as time has passed and the hysteria in the USA has proven hollow I decided the point I made while writing it originally has only become truer.

Could I have used a less controversial metaphor? Sure. But  imagine part of my point isn’t just about business but also about people in general.

Regardless.

Let me begin with what I believe is a business truth and the Ebola lesson. Businesses face failure of the system or process all the time. Sometimes small, sometimes large … but all the time. Most failures stay under the radar and are relatively harmless. They are simply the cost of doing business … as humans.

However.

Every once in awhile one of these failures comes to the attention of a manager within the system and then THEY bring it to everyone’s attention. And therein lies the bigger business truth … discerning the type of error – exception or systematic.

That said. With regard to exceptions … business people fall into one of two categories:

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Those who see the exception as systemic <a reflection of an ongoing issue>

Those who see the exception as … well … an exception

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Why am I discussing exceptions in business? Well. The recent “Ebola crisis” in the United States made me think about it.

Huh?

There has been ONE Ebola death in the USA.

ONE

And how many people have died from Ebola contracted in Britain or USA?

That would be none.

And how many people who have had Ebola in the USA or Britain have been cured and still alive.

That would be all or 100%.

Uhm.

That could be construed as an exception <or an exceptional circumstance>.

In fact.

You are more likely to be struck by lightning this year <one in 960,000>, killed by a dog <one in 11 million> or win the lottery than you are to die from Ebola.

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“Our biggest fears are terrorism, Ebola and viruses, but we’re more likely to slip in the bathtub or eat too many french fries than die of the things most of us fear.”

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David Borgenicht, co-author/Worst-Case Scenario

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To be clear. Ebola is terrible.

I am not saying Ebola is not a problem, nor that the outbreak is not serious. And there is nothing irrational about taking precautions for preventing the spread of Ebola to the US, or any other country for that matter.

But three cases do not a national crisis make. We need to please try to approach this issue <not a crisis> with science-based fact. Hyperbole does nothing for you or anyone else.

People should remember that the family members of Thomas Duncan did not come down with Ebola. They lived with this sick man with no complex protective gear for several days before he was admitted to the hospital.

None got sick.

I would also like to note that while ‘the system’ was relentlessly referred to as ‘inept’  … one person entered the US without prior knowledge <one> … and all others who entered were noted <and did not infect anyone else> … and all others who COULD have entered the USA … did not.

Uhm.

Certainly seems like the systems & processes worked.

Anyway.

The US response to the fear of Ebola made me think about business. Because the response is frighteningly similar to what happens in business.

One error or mistake leads to a general ‘crisis’ modality and an outcry for change or simply ‘do something.’ I am talking about what people may call ‘proportionate response … or what Simon Jenkins called “… a lost control of the language of proportion with the result an outbreak of crying-wolf syndrome.”

I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a business meeting watching people wring their hands and speculate on ‘why did this happen?” <that is the business version of ‘misinformation’ … the ‘made up’ version of why things happened the way they did>.

But.

Once the misinformation is stripped away, the remaining question is, and always will be, how big is the problem?

And therein lies the exception management flaw in today’s business world. We seek some absurd level of perfection and in doing so we shut down in dealing with an exception with the incredibly stupid intent to break <or revisit> a well designed, well working system to eliminate a … well … exception.

We look for trouble where there truly is none. We find issues everywhere … even when it is simply a perception … or worse … a speculative ‘what if’ issue.

We end up applying the wrong remedy <or sometimes an unnecessary remedy>.

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“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

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Groucho Marx

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All the while:

–          Time is being invested by valuable people <and valueless people who are typically driving the insanity>

–          The system is shut down <or under such scrutiny that thos within the system are being less than efficient>

–          Experts <those who actually know theire shit> are being ignored – because if one thing happened than of course other thngs could happen and the ‘expert’ is doubted as such

Look.

To submit to fear rather than the advice of all the experts is negligence of the highest order. Yet. It happens in business all … the … time.

The fear of “what happens if this happens again ??!!??”

The weak management people feel a sense of ‘lack of control’ <I wanted to type impotence but that freaks men out so much that they are spurred into even more insane behavior> and with that sense of no control they rage that something must be done.

And the weak overcome the strong in their rage.

How the fuck does that happens so often?

Well.

Pretty much any big decision has to be taken by the person at the top. And there are, frankly, only so many hours in the day and only so much room in a leader’s head. And managing increasing irrationality is difficult.

Extremely difficult.

Especially when real knowledge is overcome by misplaced anxieties.

Add in that almost every organization has multiple issues happening at the same time … not all of ‘crisis’ type but certainly some level of ‘geez … we need to deal with this.’

Add it all together and there is simply not enough capacity to deal with all issues at once.

If you do try … well … we end up making mistakes in the handling of each of them … and, of course, that means they all get worse.

Uh oh.

Then anxiety <or fear> feeds them all.

The business loses any sense of proportion.

The business loses any sense of pragmatism.

The business loses its frickin’ mind.

That said.

Let me get back to ‘proportional response’ in business by going back to Ebola.

We read a lot of this in media:

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“The story of the U.S. Ebola outbreak is already a litany of failure.

To call it a tale of astounding incompetence would be overly generous.”

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Yikes.

I could place this comment into almost any business meeting taking out Ebola and putting in whatever ‘mistake’ or ‘failure of the system’ you would like.

And just as in business we could point out that 10’s of thousands … if not 100’s of thousands of tasks have been completed successfully … and that the ‘process’ has filtered out multiple errors and winnowed ‘imperfections’ down to a manageable ‘exception’ type scenario … well … we would still find that the ‘proportional response’ gets driven by the exception.

It is an unfortunate almost inevitable business truth.  A bad thing … even just one bad thing … creates a crisis scenario.

And therein lies the biggest challenge.

Inevitable criticism based on some perception of perfectionism.

It is an unfortunate truth that people expect certain things … and often these ‘certain things’ are unrealistic.

Maybe think about this from a medical health perspective.

In the medical world if you know what type of event has occurred … you can estimate how many patients … and it’s pretty easy to calculate what to expect.

In a hospital emergency room it isn’t the total number of patients that concerns them, but rather the number that will die if not treated in minutes or a few hours.

The rest they have no problem letting wait.

This suggests that a major incident like an earthquake or terrorist attack is very predictable.

All you really need to know is the type of event and the numbers and the scope and you almost immediately have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

On the other hand.

Think about something like a real bad flu. It is an unpredictable event and there is no way you can prepare for it.

Therefore … the objective is to protect the hospital from it.

In business that is about building a proactive system or process.

However … if the unpredictable event happens I don’t go about rebuilding the entire system or process … why? … because building systems for unpredictable events is stupid. Ok. Maybe not stupid … but it is clearly a time suck hole.

Look.

I am all for striving for perfection with an eye toward the implementation of an idea. But as with so many aspects of life, the key is striking a balance between opposing forces, each with its own set of pros and cons. Too little perfectionism leads to a rapid but undesirable endpoint. Too much perfectionism leads to analysis paralysis and no endpoint at all.

To be clear.

Things happen in business.

All.

The.

Time.

Not everything is a crisis. And even a crisis has a familiar pattern.

You’re knocked off balance.

You learn.

You adapt.

But rarely, even after a crisis, do you completely rethink the system & process you have in place.

Why?

First.

You have most typically invested a lot of smart thinking and smart people building what you are doing … and 99.9% of the time it works just fine.

Second.

Most crises are unpredictable and occur .01% of the time. Uhm. They are exceptions. Exceptions have an exceptional ability to find whatever crappiness resides within any management person.

Crappy management uses perfection as an excuse to be crappy managers.

Crappy managers use exceptions to try and build value in their crappy manager status.

Look.

I have been a manager … and I certainly have had my crappy leadership moments.

We all make good decisions and bad decisions.

Part of being a good manager is … well … simply accepting the consequences of our decisions. And I don’t begrudge a good sense for a quest for perfection. The attempt and ‘envisioning some form of perfection’ can be a valuable exercise.

But I do think perfection is far too often used to mismanage exceptions.

Bottom line.

Sometimes you should do nothing.

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EBOLA

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So in the interest of some basic health promotion, here are the facts.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/13/how-avoid-catching-ebola

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• Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with body fluids.

• An individual is only contagious when symptomatic and unwell, not during the incubation period.

• The virus itself is weak, surviving for only a short time outside the body, and can be eradicated with simple measures like soap, bleach, heat and sunlight.

We are living in frightening times, all of us.

Knowledge is power, so let’s arm ourselves appropriately. Hysteria and paranoia will only be counter-productive in achieving the one thing that we all want: to end this epidemic.

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Benjamin Black, MD at Médecins Sans Frontières on his way back to Sierra Leone