Snowplows?

Something else on the topic of being ready for anything.

My little North Texas town got about seven inches of snow one day of last week.

My county road crew, as far as I know, does not own a single snow plow. So the roads never got plowed.

So, do we say that they were not ready to handle the snow?

I don't think so.

In this part of the world, it's exceedingly rare to get that much snow in one day.

Yes, it did slow people down for a while. But, as usually happens, the roads cleared themselves with the help of a little sunshine just a day or two after.

If we say the local public services were “ready,” what we really mean is that they were:

• Ready to haul out the salt trucks and gravel spreaders.

• Ready to handle the occasional complaint, which is sure to come from a few people.

• Ready to accommodate the two or three days of delay in their public works projects.

• Ready to drive out and help the occasional person who gets stuck in the snow.

Of course they could use their limited budget to purchase a handful of snow plows. And to store them. And maintain them. And run them over all the roads so quickly that they’re all plowed before the snow melts on its own.

And one day, if public sentiment insists upon it, they may decide to do that. (I think it would be crazy, but local politics can be weird.)

But in the meantime, they're doing something that I think is rather prudent:

• They're calculating the likelihood that the snowplows would even be useful.

• They're calculating the cost, both of plowing the roads, and of not plowing them.

• Thus, they're calculating the total risk by considering the likelihood of an event, combined with the severity of that event.

• Finally, they're making a reasonable and informed decision as to the most effective way to handle that risk.

Snowplows? Probably not worth it.

Extra manpower and an occasional disgruntled voter? Probably worth it.

You are — I hope — doing some of the same in your own work.

Building an ironclad system that smoothly handles every possible contingency is very, very expensive.

And considering that “every possible contingency” is literally an infinite range, it's both very expensive and literally mpossible.

Instead of that impossible expense, you can protect both your sanity and your operations by gauging the risk (the likelihood of a particular negative event multiplied by the negative impact of that event) and letting that inform the appropriate cost (in missed opportunity, funds, human resources, good will, and delay) for a solution that will handle it.

If the total risk (likelihood X negative impact) is high, it’s probably worth a more elaborate solution. But if it’s low, a simpler approach may be better.

All the best,
A.