Management is a complex process. Good plans executed poorly may be worse than poor plans executed well. This is never truer than at times of disaster, in which plans made from afar have to be implemented by those on the scene first, often with limited preparation. If public and private organizations fail to learn from what happened in New Orleans, that may be the ultimate tragedy of a series of events that evoked feelings ranging from anger to embarrassment from the largest group of respondents to any of these columns thus far.
Among the lessons learned from New Orleans, according to Josie Graham, were these summed up in three words: "Plan, communicate, and execute . . . do not assume. We all know what happens when we assume." Beverly Withers observed that "those within private organizations did far better than those in the public system." Katherine Lawrence developed that further in commenting, ". . . Some people fell off the radar because they weren't part of ‘the plan' . . . Someone forgot to do the return-on-investment, and we as a nation will now pay a pretty price, not only monetarily but also emotionally." Gail Reichert commented: "Perhaps there's too much policy and procedure in place and not enough thinking." For David Brewster, lessons included the "failure of strategic planning to consider the small, frontline detail . . . a matter of getting close enough to the micro-detail to be able to plan with simple, practical ends in mind." Dennis Crane added that "true leadership does make a difference." Related to this was Yuko Nakanishi's observation that "any ambiguity in terms of responsibilities . . . must be eliminated ASAP."
Responses that these lessons suggested ranged from study to action. Andrew Williamson sounded a common call for a "blue ribbon committee similar to the 9/11 Commission to study all the sources of the problems that contributed to this disaster." Margaret O'Keeffe suggested that "the expertise should come from relief organizations like the Red Cross. They should be listened to for counsel in scenario planning before the next natural nightmare hits. . . ." Nikhil Zaveri proposed that ". . . there should be training and development of citizens by the government, involving the corporate world in the entire process, so that citizens could meet these kinds of calamities with ease and cool minds." Eric Schmidt echoed this call to action in commenting that "readiness is only achieved through practice." E. Hassen observed that "events cannot be predicted with a long lead time. Every organization needs to be more flexible, more modular, more adaptable." As for staffing, Paul Jackson recommended: "Get rid of bureaucratic leaders and put in their place entrepreneurs, and the problems we saw won't happen in the future."
If these are some of the lessons, how good is the learning process going forward? Who should take the lead in the teaching—that is, identifying best practices in the public and private sectors and making sure that they are disseminated and acted upon? Rather than putting primary emphasis on the placement of blame, can the studies resulting from the disaster be important contributors to the learning process? If so, what will have to happen? What do you think? 