The Case of the Pesky Retiree

The client, a utility company, had a problem. An executive outlined the situation for me:

“There’s a retiree?-- not one of ours -- with lots of time on his hands. He knows quite a bit about electric distribution systems, so he goes driving around our service territory, finding broken or worn out system components, and taking pictures of them.”

“And then?” I asked.

“Well, he sends the photos to us and also sends them to the commission,” the executive said as he produced a small stack of photos, printed from the digital files taken by the troublesome retiree. “Then the commission staff asks what we’re doing about them.”

The photos documented mostly minor problems, mostly in rural areas. They included broken cross arms on poles, missing insulators, guy wires without any safety covers to prevent collisions, leaking pole-mounted transformers…a collection of things that needed attention.

I looked through the photos, thought for a minute, and asked a few questions.

“Has he ever discovered something that was an immediate threat to employee or public safety?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you do?”

“We immediately sent a crew to correct the problem and remove the hazard.”

“Has he ever discovered something that you knew about already?”

“No, it’s always something we were previously unaware of.”

“Has he ever reported something that wasn’t an actual problem?”

“Not yet,” the executive answered.

“Can we make the argument that he has possibly prevented an equipment failure, an outage, or an injury to an employee or a member of the public?” I asked.

“Well, yes. That’s possible. But what should we do about him?”

I thought for another moment and offered a brief suggestion (and a short lecture).

“Give him a better camera and a gas card to cover some of his cost of driving around. You can’t prevent him from spotting problems, taking photos, and sending those photos to the commission. You’ve acknowledged that he’s found some urgent problems and let you know about them so you could fix them. If he has a better camera, you’ll get better images that will help determine exactly what needs to be done.”

There were two ways to look at the troublesome retiree.

First, as an annoying busybody who was second-guessing the company’s maintenance and safety chores and providing the commission with fodder for frequent calls to check on the status of repairs.

Or second, as an ally, a low-cost asset in the field, troubleshooting problems and giving the company a chance to fix them before they led to outages, or worse.

The client gave the gentleman a better camera, a small monthly allowance for gas, and a brief orientation on how to safely document whatever he found. A testy relationship became a productive partnership.

The moral(s) of the story: Think twice before you start a fight. Look for common ground. Invest in the relationship. Find ways to cultivate benefits instead of simply avoiding risks.

If your default response identifies everything as a problem, you’ve already eliminated potential ways of resolving the issue in a positive way.