Preventing a crisis can be a hassle. Standards need to be enforced . . . and that's a hassle. Incompetents need to be turned around or removed . . . and that's a hassle. Plans must be reviewed, assumptions challenged, and facts found. All of those can be huge hassles. That's why people avoid doing what should be done.
But have you noticed how that word disappears when a crisis is at the door?
4 comments:
This conforms perfectly with my personal experience. When times are good, it's easy to not care about internal controls, documentation, incompetents, small ineffeciencies. When it all hits the fan, suddenly people care about those kinds of things very, very much.
Dan,
And sometimes the people who are celebrated for helping to resolve the crisis are among those who should have prevented it.
Michael
Michael, that got a good chuckle out of me. As a consultant you probably resolve the crisis which no one can claim is of your making. My profession is far more in preventing one from happening in the first place, and when I do my job absolutely no one notices :)
It reminds me of the old joke about the man whose job it was to keep tigers out of the building. When questioned if this was a good use of money, he would just ask "Seen any tigers?"
In Brazil there is an interesting saying, "let's create the difficulty to sell the facility '... Unfortunately, lot of people think that way.
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