My Space-station broke
Did you see the spacestation story last week with a hole in the hull? I took a lesson from their response that I thought I’d share.
The old world of technology, held together with sticking tape and string, has left a deep scar, one that can now be counter-productive if we don’t take care. NASA could have taken their leak problem and decided, we have two options
1) Bring the whole thing back down to Earth and let’s rebuild it
2) Build a brand new machine that can go up there, remove that entire section and replace it with a perfect one
Sound familiar? The crew are slowly asphyxiating while a big committee gets together to decide which solution is the most cost effective and long term sustainable.
They didn’t do this – They got some epoxy, shoved it in the hole and plugged the leak. They gained some time to put a proper solution in place.
There is no need to be afraid of short term fixes, of a bit of sticking tape and string. What we should all be afraid of, is a lack of follow-up, of tenacity and resilience, to keep the topic on the agenda, even amongst all other priorities, to ensure a long term sustainable solution is also put in place. If as leaders we can be trusted to do this, then we can earn the right to act at speed, fix things quickly and then keep them fixed.
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