My work as done vs. work as imagined of the day!

Today I had to take my kid very early in the morning to the hospital, as he was suffering from ear infection. Part of his treatment was antibiotics that he should take every 12 hours. So far so good.

Went back home; started giving him the medications - usually it’s my wife who manage this, but I thought to give her a break this time. The antibiotic was a powder like, and I am supposed to add water to it to have it as liquid solution. Easy task for someone like me! Or at least I thought!

The bottle had all the instructions I needed; fill with water to 2/3 of the mark, shake hard, then complete filling to the mark, shake again and then you’re good to go! Well, that was the work as imagined! Simple and easy; definitely I don’t need to wake my wife!

The moment I started to pour water I realized that the powder is forming some sort of a thick chunk that doesn’t allow the water to flow freely. However, the mental vision I had that it would dissolve easily but because of this white chunk I couldn’t tell exactly how much I added. I thought it’s not a big deal since I will “shake vigorously” and all will be dissolved, and “vigorously” I did! I was surprised with the outcome. The whole bottle now turned into white with the solution being suspended all over the inside. Now there was no way to see or know how much water is needed to reach the “level” mark! Welcome to my work as done! I had two options, either to go wake up my wife or to improvise!

I brought a knife, inserted it inside the bottle to try to take an estimated measure of the liquid level, I then added additional water based on my estimation. I tapped myself on the back for that, thinking that I adapted perfectly to the situation and solved the problem. Time to finally give me kid his medication!

While this story might seem trivial from risk level, the thought process I had was clear at that time and resemble a lot of the thought process that goes through our frontline workers, but at an even more complex and dynamic environment.

Few reflections from my thinking process:

• All the time my goal has not changed, it was to give my kid the medication, and I would achieve this goal no matter what.
• I was doing this for the first time – at least for that medication – yet I was certain that it’s an easy-peasy task.
• I was certain the instructions were clear, and it explained everything.
• I was surprised with the outcome (WAD part) and I never saw it coming.
• If my first improvising plan did not work, I was going to improvise more.
• At no point did the thought of “stopping the work” occur to me, because back to the first point, my main goal was to give my kid the medication, stop would drive me further away from my goal.
• From hindsight: stop work would mean that I had to wake up my wife, try again in the additional bottle I had, go back to the pharmacist to help me out. All would have taken longer to be done, and I wanted to give my kid the medication ASAP!
• All the time, all this made sense to me.

Now take this back to our frontline workers in any industry, do you think they face similar situations where they were surprised with the actual WAD compared to the WAI they have envisioned? How do you think they will adapt? How will the organization deal with this ‘adaptation’ if things went wrong rather than successful? Most importantly, how are we passing this knowledge and learning across in constructive manner??