[quote=walterwhite]i think we are encouraged to suffer from this. i read an article in a recent trade journal about “confidence” in my line of work. a successful person said when she was young, she was asked by senior partner if she knew how to do a particular task ona tight timeline. she said ‘sure!” she gave this as an example of the correct way to be at work to move ahead. i understand a can-do attitude, and “fake it till you make it”, the problem is, dude, you may be the guy who leaks a billion barrels int he gulf or whatever. on the other hand, president is so complex a task no one is really competent, i suppose.[/quote]
Scaredy: I work in an environment where risk of a bad event (defined in this case as an accidental blast or terrorist attack) drives all other business decisions. Interestingly, the engineers are the last ones consulted. The attorneys and accountants are first (“How big is the potential liability/litigation and how much might it cost us”), followed by various (clueless) managers and management teams and finally the engineers.
I don’t know if this is what happened at BP Deep Horizon (and they should probably rename it “BP Event Horizon”), but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I bring this up because we’ve now reversed (or perverted) risk, including risk analysis and risk management. We’ve seen mispricing and misunderstanding of risk in the financial markets, and we’re now seeing examples in oil/gas, mining and Petrochem. Instead of letting the problem drive the solution and finding the best people who can actually solve the problem, we spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to either evade the problem or shift blame.
I know, for a fact, that the White House was flooded with calls from literally hundreds of genuine experts trying to offer their services on the Gulf spill. Obama could have and should have put together a “strike team” of experts, instead of relying on BP (which clearly and sadly has no clue) and the Coast Guard (which ain’t in this line of work).
