The pandemic has raised many questions as to whether it’s a disaster that could have been prevented. There are two kinds of disasters humanity has to face – natural ones, over which we to dater had very little control, although the growing climate change crisis is a preventable disaster if we collectively take the right action, and then there are the man-made disasters over which we have more control than we realise.
The first question that gets asked in the case of a man-made disaster is: couldn’t anything have been done to prevent the disaster. And the answer usually is, “Yes”.
Much debate has already been undertaken to determine if the Covid-19 pandemic is a man-made disaster that could have been prevented. Such disasters are usually caused by a series of contributing factors. Investigators and researchers who have had the task of investigating man-made disasters such as airplane crashes, large scale corporate failures, space shuttle catastrophes, personal reputation failures or government disasters have generally come to the same conclusion. Contrary to what many people think, the disaster did not occur as a result of one isolated catastrophic mistake, but rather as the result of a chain of events that eventually led to one, sometimes small, event taking place that acted as the trigger for the disaster.
That means there was a series of events that, had anyone recognised their significance, connected the dots and taken appropriate action to address them, could have been stopped so that the eventual disaster did not occur. Time will reveal all regarding our current disaster …
Part of the tragedy of any man-made disaster is that no-one saw the significance of the seemingly innocent and unrelated events that were ultimately building toward the disaster.
Now that we are well and truly in a disaster with a global death toll at the time of writing this of 4,203,776 deaths, the question we now need to be asking is not whether the whole pandemic could have been prevented (a good question but one that won’t at this point necessarily prevent more deaths), but what we can do to reduce or prevent further deaths.
It may be prudent for you to take a step back from your personal and/or professional life to assess the events that are happening around you. Is there a pattern of events that could possibly be contributing to a disaster waiting to happen in your family, team or company?
Look for something insignificant. King Solomon talks of the “little foxes” that destroy a vineyard. Maybe there are a number of “little foxes” in your life or your company that need to be addressed.
Ignoring seemingly unimportant matters can indeed contribute to the pandemic disaster continuing. By not wearing a mask, not washing or sanitising your hands, not socially distancing or not getting vaccinated, you could unwittingly be contributing to the disaster continuing.
Don’t ignore small details. Successful detectives who crack major cases often point to the fact that it wasn’t some brilliant flash of inspiration that resulted in the case being cracked, but it was the routine, unglamorous legwork – attending to the small details – that cracked the case wide open.
Don’t grow weary of attending to the small details during these times. Although you may never know it, you may well be responsible for saving someone’s life, possibly your own!
You may therefore be doing yourself a massive favour. After all, the best disaster is the one that simply never happened!
Alan Hosking is the Publisher of HR Future magazine, www.hrfuture.net and @HRFuturemag. He is an internationally recognised authority on leadership competencies for the future and teaches experienced business leaders as well as millennial managers how to lead with empathy, compassion, integrity, purpose and agility. In 2018, he was named by US-based web site Disruptordaily.com as one of the “Top 25 Future of Work Influencers to Follow on Twitter“. In 2020, he was named one of the “Top 200 Global Power Thought Leaders to watch in 2021” by peopleHum in India.
