Sometimes You’re the Windshield…

It’s worth pointing out that sometimes, there’s just not much you can do about the problems your business is going to encounter. Sometimes, there’s just going to be a stoned screech owl nesting in your Christmas tree, or some state law that hasn’t been enforced since 1793 that outlaws your new business operation from accepting any money for your services, or some evil genius who has just inserted a “wizard” subroutine into some Microsoft product that will render your entire industry obsolete. And sometimes, it’s going to be turkey vultures…

A story being reported this week in the a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tells the story of the Orthopedic Hospital of Wisconsin, which has had the unusual experience of having at least three nesting pairs of turkey vultures take up residence on the ledges and windowsills of the building. It’s bad enough to drive up to a hospital in which you are going to receive treatment and see a flock of vultures circling overhead, but apparently some of the patients have been complaining about waking up in the morning (or worse yet, after surgery) and finding a vulture perched on their windowsill…

Now, it’s important to realize that vultures are not known to pose any threat to human life whatsoever; they only eat things that are already dead, and have never been known to even approach a live human. Turkey vultures don’t even carry any forms of disease that could be transferred to a human host; despite their rather demonic appearance (red, wrinkled bald heads, black feathers, impressive beaks and talons, and beady red eyes) these birds could not possibly harm anyone at the hospital. It’s also worth noting that it’s an orthopedic hospital; most of the people there are going to be receiving treatments that have an almost zero chance of a fatal outcome. Still and all, there are probably going to be those people who will panic and run home upon seeing one of these birds. Or at least take their business somewhere else…

In the study of Institutional Failure, which is a specialty under the discipline of Strategic Management, all negative events that can impact your business are considered to have a greater or lesser degree of predictability; that is, some things (like a competitor inventing an alternative product or just reverse-engineering yours) are fairly predictable, while others (like a scientific breakthrough that eliminates your entire industry) are rather less so. Exactly how one goes about determining how likely a specific event is to happen makes up a large part of the studies I am starting on, and I won’t weary the reader with the details here. I’ll just note that a major factor in the survival of any business is how well you can anticipate the threats to your business – and which ones you develop plans to deal with…

Some events are so unlikely as to be not worth bothering about; events planned for Los Angeles in August are not going to be snowed out, for example, nor is your new aircraft design likely to be endangered by an unprecedented marine sponge migration. There have been any number of “Winter Festival” events that have been spoiled by unusually warm (or, at least, snow-free) winters over the years, however, and the second B-1 bomber prototype was destroyed by a flock of snow geese making a completely unprecedented migratory flight in the middle of the summer, to take only the obvious example. There is also the case of a well-know lawnmower company that almost went under because they attempted to introduce a line of snow blowers during a run of unusually warm winters...

In my working life as a manager and a management consultant I have done a lot of strategic planning, and I am always amazed by how many people spend their time and effort worrying about the trivial, the bizarre, and the completely unlikely, while losing track of things that can actually do them in. If your hospital provides the best care available for orthopedic patients, people are going to come there no matter what is perching on the windowsills, and if it is possible for bird strikes to disable your airplane, you must take into account that sooner or later, someone is going to fly it into a flock of birds. But sitting around and whining about things is not going to help much with either problem. Just keep in mind that in business, as in any other aspect of life, some days you’re the windshield, and some days, you’re the bug…