Based on a true story…
A corporate vice president was assigned to run a large manufacturing division. Because the operation was in the red, his first task was to restore profitability. One might think all he had to do was to increase sales, but one would be wrong. Because the products were priced too low to cover manufacturing costs, increased sales would only mean increased losses. Further, it had taken years for the division to decline this much. Manufacturing costs could only be cut a little without sacrificing quality. The price had to be raised – significantly and immediately. Of course, this was not popular with the customers. However, when they were informed it was either pay more or lose your main supplier, they at least understood. The VP told the board of directors because it had taken nearly a decade to get into such a hole, they should expect a complete turnaround to take a few years of careful management. The alternative was to sell the division to its largest customer. The board decided to sell instead of waiting for the division to become as profitable as it had been.
It would be tempting to blame the new division VP for the problem, but for years management decided to keep doing things as they were always done. The former team had neither anticipated nor reacted to change. The VP did what he could, and the division became solvent enough to sell, but without more time, there would be no way he could fix all the shortcomings of the past. Every time we procrastinate, we are like a bulldozer trying to push through a higher and higher mound of dirt. If we don’t take care of things, someday it will be impossible to push hard enough.
Often a new movie studio CEO will be hailed as a genius if he has a run of profitable movies in his first few years, or he could be branded an idiot if he has a string of flops. Yet typically it takes 3-4 years for a movie to go from pre-production to theatrical release. A new CEO can only prove his worth after a few years. To acclaim or accuse this person would be to engage in the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (after this therefore because of this). Often governors and presidents are accused of causing problems they did not cause, and they like to take credit for results they did not achieve. Often problems and solutions take years, if not decades, to develop. And sometimes a new leader can only make small changes.
As Buckminster Fuller pointed out, anticipatory problem-solving is preferable to delayed action. If we wait until the problem becomes big enough, or evident enough, solving it may prove to be nearly impossible – or much more expensive. NASA and the military at their best try to anticipate problems. Think of manned space missions and submarine warfare. The idea is to plan for as many contingencies as possible, develop procedures to address those contingencies, and have back-up systems for your back-up systems. Even then, a perfect storm of events may still overwhelm all your preparation, but that should be rare if you look far enough ahead.
That said, we live in a world in which most people don’t want to address a problem until they must. At the end of the semester, a student who is failing a course asks her professor if there is any way she can earn “extra credit.” A man who gains “too much” weight might decide to watch what he eats. A person who gets cancer might think about quitting smoking. A person who nearly dies from alcohol poisoning might consider rehab. A business on the verge of bankruptcy might tell everyone to “think outside the box” just before mass layoffs occur. City and state governments generally wait until bridges, sewers, water systems, or power grids fail before acting. When the Earth becomes hot enough or seas rise high enough, perhaps people will agree we should probably do something about that. If an incoming killer asteroid is sighted far too late, many people might wish we had spent more on detection and deflection. In every case, as the hole grows deeper, the cost of fixing it gets higher.
If a problem isn’t obvious, it’s hard to find the motivation to solve it. Yet, the time to find solutions is well before the crisis stage. Unfortunately, if we wait too long, there may be no solutions, and things may fall apart: the student will fail the course, the man will end up weighing 650 pounds, the addict will die, the company will go bankrupt, bridges and power grids will fail, millions will suffer through climate change, or an asteroid will wipe us out. The old saying, “when you find yourself in a hole, the first step is to stop digging,” comes to mind. In many ways, every problem denied, and every solution postponed, digs a deeper hole. We all need to stop digging.
MurrayWorks 