Observing the virulent spread of ‘The Bug’ and the institutional responses from around the world, there is a disturbing commonality that points at a deficiency in political and ethical leadership, until the horses are running free, and the stable almost empty.
In this country, at least we have been consistent.
Consistent in denying there was anything to worry about until the crisis is upon us.
Since the 90’s there have been strident calls by scientists that we need to get off our collective arses and address the emerging human causes of climate change.
Ignored, until people die in fires, and then slowly, edged towards the backburner.
Similarly, the clusterf**k that has been the management of the Murray Darling basin, although people may not have died, water has been ‘allocated’ under dubious circumstances, natural flows disrupted, investment distorted, and money made on the ‘QT’.
Now we have the Bug, and people are dying as it spreads, and particularly in the US, the systems are now seen as having been gutted, and are grossly inadequate to manage the crisis. That crisis is now escalating beyond anything foreseen to racial violence, unleashing forces from what now appears to be a cultural pressure cooker with devastating results.
In commercial life, the situation is the same. BP engineers knew that the Deepwater Horizon rig was a bomb waiting to go off, Boeing engineers knew there were problems with the 737Max’s software, executives in Australia’s banks and insurance companies were ripping off the estates of dead people, and enabling payments to the makers of child porn, and that ‘oldies’ were dying of neglect in aged care facilities.
There is a pattern to this political and corporate selective blindness that should deeply disturb us all.
The problem is known, when it is called to the attention of senior management it is seen as ‘inconvenient,’ so it is ignored and buried in favour of short term profit. Those doing the questioning are shut down, fired, or intimidated into silence. The problem persists in the dark corners until a crisis occurs, followed by hand wringing, press releases, provision of a sacrificial head for public consumption, and promises to do better.
The only antidote is what Ray Dalio calls radical transparency.
Shine lights in all the dark corners, create a culture where those lights are not selective or optional, but core ingredients of the culture.
