Monday, October 20, 2003
the social act of solving problems
People rarely solve urgent problems by sitting down and looking up answers. What they *do* most often, is reach for the phone to find someone else who either knows what to do --- OR -- to find someone-who -knows-someone.
Here's a story. Truth be told, it's an amalgam of 4 different incidents (all remarkably similar) - with specific companies & names changed.
who can help me solve a crisis?
17 February 2003
10:12 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
Two days out of Cancun the Captain of the cruise ship Island Wanderer sent an urgent message to the company's offices in Miami. In the last 11 hours nearly a third of the passengers had started to complain of respiratory difficulties. One elderly woman had been placed on the ships only respirator.
11:18 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
Emergency protocol was set in motion as Atlanta's Center for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were notified. Three objectives were paramount: (1) determine the cause of the outbreak, (2) establish primary medical responses and (3), baring both of these, establish where, in international waters, to quarantine the vessel.
630 p.m., Greenwich Mean Time (2 1/2 hours after the first message)
Included in the crisis team were the Wanderer's designers at Caledonia Shipworks in Glasgow (Scotland). Senior naval architect Gareth Lewis was responsible for assembling a team with direct experience in the design and maintenance of the ship that had been launched seventeen years earlier.
Lewis's solution was as clever as it was low-tech. By looking through a mailing-label database maintained for annual 'alumni parties', Lewis contacted nearly a dozen senior managers who'd worked on the Wanderer class of ships in the 70s and 80s. His message to all of them was the same:
"One of our D-Class ships at sea has had an outbreak. Bring whomever you think can help us give our friends in Miami a bit of assistance in solving a mystery.
10 Waterfront Quay -- Great Assembly Hall."
Within the hour over 40 senior employees (current and retired) were exchanging blueprints, documentation binders and ideas over hastily installed tables and computers. A 70 year-old retired maintenance supervisor mentioned problems he'd had installing HVAC filters in a similar D-Class ship. Two architects remembered AC turbine retrofits in the 90s as full of difficulties because of the ductwork. Listening in by way of a conference call, a CDC Epidemiologist asked anyone in the range of the Scottish speakerphone if there were any sharp angles in the ductwork leading either to or from the ships dehumidifying systems. When three designers laughed at the question -- pointing out that in this class of ship there were easily over a dozen right-angles in those ducts -- the CDC researcher had a hunch: insufficient airflow through long-neglected ductwork was an idea breeding ground for potentially lethal mold spores.
9 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Teams of HVAC engineers quickly determined access points in the ductwork where mold could be checked. Shortly thereafter, surgical-masked sailors aboard the Wanderer began cutting holes in the ship's ducts for sampling sites.
4:25 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Six hours after the first distress message to Miami, the USS George Washington dispatched a Harrier AV-B jump jet from its flight deck. Forty minutes later it hovered over the Wanderer to retrieve biological samples as well to deliver medical supplies.
The CDC's hunch was verified aboard the George Washington. The course of action was clear. Sections of the Wanderer underwent disinfecting and mold removal. Passengers' health conditions stabilized. Additional HEPA filters were jury-rigged into the cooling system and the ship proceeded, nearly on schedule, to its next port of call.
A potential health disaster was avoided.
__________________________________________________
SO WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
The solution came from a hunch: a hunch prompted by an observation of someone who -- most likely -- would not have been included in a problem-solving conversation.
We can also certainly assume that - 20 years ago - neither that individual's 'tacit knowledge' nor any elaborations of 'best practices' were things captured by Knowledge Management systems at Caledonian Shipworks.
Gareth Webster did something terribly smart that day. His initial question was less with WHAT had to be known and more with WHO had to be contacted in the hopes they'd lead to others with the right experience.
posted by Tom |
11:29 AM
|
|
|
|
|
