Musings at Altitude

It’s hard to follow up a “things that make me smile” posting with a discussion on “omission”…but this one is still nagging at me and if I don’t follow up now it will continue to nag at me till I get my thoughts out.

Let’s start with a definition of omission – “something left out, not done, or neglected” – www.dictionary.com.  And let’s also agree that it applies to all walks of life, not just to business.  For example, Christ talks about omission in his lesson of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37).  In this parable, He talks about a priest and a Levite walking down a street and seeing an obviously wounded man laying in the street.  Both of them passed by quickly looking the other way.  But a Samaritan saw the wounded man, had compassion on him, and got him to safety and took care of him.  The priest and the Levite by ignoring the wounded man in the street directly portray omission – seeing something that needed to be done or seeing someone that needed some help, but instead turning the other way.  The Samaritan on the other hand showed an example of commission, taking action based on the need that existed. 

As another example, one of my favorite songs from my teenage years was Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle”.  It’s a powerful song about the relationship between a father and son, and the second verse goes like this:

“My son turned ten just the other day,

He said, “thanks for the ball Dad come on let’s play,

Can you teach me to throw”, I said “not today,

I got a lot to do”, he said, “that’s ok”;

And he walked away but his smile never dimmed

And said, “I’m gonna be like him, yeah

You know I’m gonna be like him.”

In this case, the father is neglecting his son and in an act similar to the priest and the Levite, he turns his head and rushes on by rather than responding in the right way to an issue right in front of him.  Unfortunately, the son does indeed grow up just like his Dad, ignoring his own father then when his father wanted to then spend time with his son.

In business, just like in these examples from other aspects of life, sins of omission occur when we:

• see things that need to be done and don’t do them
• see things that seem to be too good to be true and don’t probe deeply to find out if they are indeed as indicated
• see things being done wrong and hope others will do something about it so we ignore them
• have a chance to get someone to check our work but don’t do it because we believe so confidently that our work is right
• see someone obviously having a bad day at work and don’t ask what’s wrong or if you can help because you don’t want to spend the time to really respond if they want to talk
• have a gut feeling that says something is wrong but we don’t act on that instinct, instead preferring to hope all is well when it most likely isn’t

There are so many more than these, but I think we can all remember times where we didn’t act when we should have or didn’t respond to that gut feeling that something was wrong and then regretted it later when things actually were very wrong.

I said earlier that sins of omission stick with you for a long time.  I have so many nagging memories of times where I looked at numbers and sensed something wrong but didn’t act.  Or other times, I sensed a deep irritation in my client but instead of confronting it and addressing it I toiled on and then had to live with the negative outcome that then occurred. 

I also have a couple of very vivid memories of listening to my gut and thankfully being right.  In one particular case, I interviewed with a gentleman who was offering me the world to work for him, and I sensed something very wrong.  I turned down that job and only a few short months later that gentleman was arrested and convicted for embezzlement.  I believe this was divine intervention because the unrest I felt after interviewing for that job made me physically sick – literally.  In another case, I watched as my company just racked up the profits, and I couldn’t believe how profitable we were.  I smiled as the numbers kept growing, but something seemed very wrong.  I finally reacted (slower than I should have though), and sure enough, we were not accruing for required taxes and as soon as they were deducted we were back down to a good but not nearly so great a company.

In today’s environment where we have so much data and so many direct inputs from “sensors” all over the organization, warning signs pop up all the time.  In some cases, flares are launched as people sense and see things that are out of the ordinary or recognize events that could cause catastrophic consequence if not immediately addressed.  In many big companies with their lethargic response mechanisms, any sensor data that shows negative trends or grossly out of norm events will result in more data gathering and no action until absolute certainty exists that something is wrong.  Unfortunately, by the time that certainty is gained, the adverse consequences are already impacting business results.  In many small companies, the worry meter is pegged when the first sensors launch warnings, but the response is tabled as those that need to respond are so focused on the many other pressing issues of the small business that hope becomes their strategy and in that hope they think the warnings are false alarms so nothing will need to be done.

One of the sad facts in business is that folks are rarely rewarded for being proactive – mainly because we never really focus on what might have happened if we hadn’t acted in whatever way we did.  Instead, we reward people mightily for reaction, even if those reacting were guilty of not acting to begin with thus causing the crisis to react to.  Sins of omission lead to reaction which leads to rewards for cleaning up situations, even those that should never have occurred to begin with.  Acts of commission make great companies but not individual heroes.   Those responses to sensor data that correct something in advance of the crisis (or prevent something from being wrong that could lead to adversity) are rarely mentioned in the weekly reports and even more rarely rewarded through the bonus structure.  Imagine if they were.

But back to the issue of data.  There is so much data available today and so much trending that is done, that any time something is out of ordinary in a company today, someone, in fact many someones, ought to be probing the data being given, researching the issues that appear out of the ordinary, and making things right in advance of adversity occurring.  There really is no excuse for sins of omission today in business.