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Let It Snow, Let It Snow
By Timothy A. Wilson | December 21, 2007
Let me start out by saying, that I’m not a real big fan of snow, as a matter of fact I really hate winter. To me winter is where I’m at my worst, it has something to do with the fact that it’s cold, and there is snow, and most of the people I see here in Massachusetts don’t know how to drive when it snows. We had ample proof of that this past Thursday.
December 12, 2007 will go down as the first official snow storm for Massachusetts, and perhaps one of the more confounding moments in this state’s history as it relates to how they handle a storm for which they had more then ample warning.
At the beginning of the week, the weather forecasters were predicting we would be in for a major storm, in fact, they even predicted when it would start, and that it would be the light fluff kind of snow. Now, I have to admit I was rather surprised at the preciseness of this storm. It couldn’t have been planned any better, right at 1:00pm it started snowing as predicted and it continued snowing just as each meteorologist said it would. With as much warning as we had, one would think local, city and state businesses would be prepared to deal with it. Right? Wrong. It was disastrous.
It was an example of local, city, and state government proving they could screw up a knife fight in a phone booth. A normal twenty minute commute for many people turned into a six hour marathon. Every major highway was grid locked. Traffic was at a dead stop in Boston, people were behaving irrationally trying to get home by any means necessary taking routes they knew nothing about making the situation worse. Where were the snowplows? They were stuck in traffic unable to get on the very highways they were supposed to clear.
Keep in mind; everyone had ample warning of this storm so there was no reason for the mass confusion that took place. Yet it did. Throughout the day the mayor and governor were questioned about the total state of anarchy on the highways. The mayor said he was prepared but it seem like the state wasn’t, and the governor said the state did nothing wrong, and get this, the commandant of the state police said he didn’t know that the mayor needed assistance till later that evening.
The classic finger pointing exercise and excuse making was taking place. But, I think the best was when the governor made the statement that what he would have done is to tell everyone to take the T. Somewhere along the line he missed the part that during the storm many of the trains were so full of commuters that they weren’t stopping to take on additional passengers; stranding many trying to get home during the storm.
As this debacle unfolded I couldn’t help but notice the lack of clear Expectations, Accountability, and Communication between organizations, and they were certainly not functioning as a Team. In other words, they were not EXACT in their effort to manage this storm.
The next day one of the local radio stations had the secretary of state discussing the problems of the storm and he pointed out that instead of pointing fingers at each other they needed to find out what went wrong and how to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Now there is someone who understands the EXACT principle. One can only hope that others in both local and state government learn from his example and willingness to step up to the bar and fix the problem.
Until then, let it Snow, let It Snow.
Topics: Accountability, Communication, Team building |
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