Monthly Archives: December 2012
Near Misses
I recently had the opportunity to visit Guangzhou (Canton) in the People’s Republic of China. Since this isn’t a travel blog I won’t bore you with the usual references to exotic sites and fascinating people. Among the many lasting impressions I will keep is a set of circumstances that are seared into my mind. Near death experiences have a way of doing that.
I’ve experienc
ed countless unsafe modes of transport including Tuk-Tuks in Bangkok, dirt bikes in West Texas, illegal taxis in central Mexico, parachutes in San Diego, and elephants in Chang Mai. However, taxi rides in Guangzhou had the special distinction of bringing me face-to-face with death. As a matter of course, a Cantonese taxi ride involves prolonged periods where the car straddles the lane line. No doubt, in the driver’s mind this increases their options. At any instant they can switch lanes because, after all, they’re already partially in the other lane already. As a result, a taxi ride is frequently an exercise in attacking and defending. Sort of like a perverse fencing match with potentially similar results.
Near misses, in this setting, are extremely common. You would think that after one or two near misses the driver would learn to be a bit more cautious. However, we humans have a unique and amazing ability. We can rationalize and explain away these experiences so that we are more comfortable when we repeat them. This may sound trite and even whiny. However, in any safety sensitive business this is extremely troublesome. In fact, two Georgetown University researchers (Dillon-Merrill & Tinsley) have shown that people who escape near-misses are even more likely to repeat the risky behavior. Unfortunately for many of us, surviving a near miss teaches us how good we are at surviving rather than how close we’ve come to disaster. Each time we miss we become a little more confident and a little less cautious.
There is a reason the FAA defines a near miss as an event where two planes come within a mile of each other. Pilots are required to report these near misses. Were it not for this rule (verified by radar), most professional pilots (like some professional bus drivers) would be too self-confident to report it. More significantly they would be unlikely to change any of their behaviors or procedures. That is, of course, until the near miss isn’t a miss at all.
NOTE: Peggy and Pete will be taking a break for a couple of weeks. We’ll be back early next year to share, discuss, ponder, and laugh in our usual manner. In the wake of the Newtown tragedy we will be keeping our friends and families just a little bit closer during this holiday season. We encourage you to do the same.
An Ode to the Little Big Things
During my nearly 20 years as in-house counsel with Adams 12 Five Star School District, I worked with five different superintendents, with vastly different leadership styles and personalities. I learned from each, but loved and befriended only one. It was “the little big things” about Jack Knight that endeared me to him and made an impact on me. I supposed it’s not surprising that he’s especially important to me – he’s the man who hired me, with the purpose, he told me, of “doing things better.” A simple idea, but profoundly different than the “highfalutin” (I had no idea until I just checked the Web that highfalutin is a “real” word) cost-saving, education-improving, morale-boosting ideas other superintendents managed to over-complicate, explain to death, and devastate forests with their requirements of report after report.
I learned a couple of weeks ago that Jack is struggling with his health. Actually that’s an understatement – the reports I’m getting are dire indeed. I’m very sad, but thinking about happier times I spent with Jack is buoying me up.
Each Friday, we’d debrief “LA Law” as though we were reviewing a complex calculation involving the district budget, or a critical personnel matter. We took the TV show very seriously indeed, and the week wasn’t complete until we had relived the best parts of the hour we had each spent, glued to the TV, in our own homes. Read the rest of this entry
Email Jail
In my Thanksgiving post I expressed gratitude for the “advancing technology which brings us together and allows us to share.” Now for the down side of that technology:
If you’ve been out of the office for any period of time and are at all “conne
cted”, you probably have a few dozen or hundreds of emails to review and possibly act upon. Yes, I have a smartphone which, for several dozen extra dollars, will allow me to keep current while I’m out of the country. But do I really want to take the time to respond to emails when I could be bartering over the price of a set of chopsticks or a taxi ride? When I’m on vacation I try not to check my email every single time the stupid green light flashes. In fact, I’ve been known to not even look at the phone for as long as an hour.
Don’t get me wrong. I really do appreciate staff or colleagues who copy me to make sure I’m “looped” on an issue. I also respect those who copy me out of courtesy. I just wish they would say what they need to say in the email title or first 3 lines. I’d love to be able to read, file, delete, or act upon a message without having to struggle through the two paragraph background when I already have the 3 page email thread included.
These days we all have multiple email and/or social networking accounts. Some we check regularly, some not so much. 
This leaves us with a couple of persistent questions:
- Do you have access to your friend’s super-secret account or just the secret account because, whether you like it or not, your “friends” are secretly ranking you.
- How do you stay out of email jail?
