The Business Sensei

Hidden Assumptions

We’ve been hearing a lot about how it now appears that two nurses working with Ebola patients in Dallas have contracted the disease. The big question is, of course, how did it happen? What was the mistake or violation of medical protocol that led to them getting infected?

When I ran a pandemic flu simulation exercise (essentially, an experiential assessment) in Washington DC, part of the exercise involved doctors coming down with the deadly flu strain. I received some very interesting feedback from one of the doctors. He told me about all the different simulations that they do: natural disasters, terrorist attacks, accidents, radiation poisoning, etc. Then he said, “But we’ve never done one where we get sick.”

Hidden assumptions: the things we so take for granted that we don’t even consider them. Doctors and nurses are used to working with sick people, and they are used to working through a lot of minor discomforts. They just don’t think about getting sick. Apparently, though, no one ever told that to the Ebola virus.

And that’s the key point: our hidden assumptions are great until they’re not. It’s like the old slapstick routine where the comic steps on a rake: it seems to pop up out of nowhere and smack him in the face.

The problem, though, is that hidden assumptions are just that: hidden. We don’t even realize they’re there until we trip over them. At that point, the damage is done.

It’s far better to find them ahead of time. Unfortunately, we can’t just ask about them: what are we not considering? Hidden assumptions are hidden; they are, by definition, the things we are not thinking about or even considering. They are the box we don’t even know we’re in. Experiential assessment can change that by forcing us into experiences that reveal the box.

Real opportunity comes when we realize what we’re taking for granted.

Has the pig flown?

Swine flu is in the air. After a brief flurry of panicky news reports, what we’re hearing now is that it’s not so bad, not such a big deal, and so forth.

A common event that I’ve seen at company after company is that when someone spends all night fixing a bug that they caused, they are a hero; however, the person who went home at 5pm after carefully checking their work and making sure they didn’t have any major bugs is told they aren’t working hard enough. 

An ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of cure, but people believe in the cure far more than the prevention. Heroics are always far more exciting than quietly making sure that the problem doesn’t happen in the first place.

We don’t know yet why the swine flu outbreak is turning out to be mild. To some extent, this may be due to the virus being wimpy. It may also be due to the precautions that are being taken. It’s not clear that we’ll ever be able to tell.

What we do know is that flu pandemics come around on a fairly regular basis. We also know that the 1918 pandemic started with a mild, “wimpy,” wave in the spring and summer before turning into the deadly outbreak of the fall. 

When I ran a Pandemic Flu simulation exercise in Washington DC during the summer of 2006, the response to the flu was disastrous. Fortunately, the previous and current adminstrations learned from that and other exercises; the current administration is taking all the right steps. 

I’m wondering what the public reaction will be if the flu continues to be “wimpy?” Will the administration be seen as having panicked, or as having taken reasonable precautions?

If the swine flu turns out to be nothing this summer, what will happen if it comes back in the fall?

Put another way, is it a waste of time to play it safe? It is in many companies, or at least it’s not nearly as popular as going for heroics.