The Radioactive Issue of Prevention

If an organization botches the prevention of a crisis, attention is understandably devoted to the handling of the crisis. That attention, however, should not remove future exploration of why the crisis arrived in the first place.

Time and again, I've seen management teams avoid that exploration because they know their hands are not clean. It is refreshing when you see a team with the courage to conduct a "Where did we screw up?" analysis. It is also rare.

This often is a "dog that didn't bark" moment. Listen for the mysterious silence on the question of prevention and watch for activities which are meant to obscure and not clarify.