The Blip that needs "splainin"

North Korean Soldiers in "Camouflage" Huh?

Recently a major American auto manufacturer introduced, with great fanfare, a new iconic model that was intended to reestablish their brand. Their brand was started in 1917. After years of declining sales and a brand that suffered a muddled and eroding reputation the car company was ready to roll off the assembly line "The Car" that was going to change everything. Years and millions of research & and development and design dollars had been committed to this game-changer. The investment in terms of human hours and emotional commitment was enormous. The processes were in place the scheduling had been nailed down. Millions of dollars had been spent advertising the new car. Orders for the car had been placed and buyers were waiting for delivery.  Now all that the company had to do was deliver on the promises.

Unfortunately someone forgot to thoroughly check one of the most important parts of the plan.  The place where these cars were going to be assembled had, without any indication, failed to fully commit to the high quality demanded and expected and therefore did not deliver. The cars were coming off the assembly lines plagued with numerous manufacturing and assembly defects. Car after car rolled out of the plant and virtually none of them met the high standards that this luxury brand spent years building. The results were disastrous.

How many times are we faced with something really significant and throughout the process we are counting on others to come through so we assume and simply do not check on their commitment or abilities to ensure a successful outcome. Then when things start to go wrong we do not know which way to go or who we can help to change in order to turn things around. A discovery is made that since the people at fault did not take ownership and deliver, the break down in the process is revealed and it comes to light that the disaster is simply beyond belief. And more often than not, entirely preventable. Someone or a group of people were so myopic or complacent that no one saw the train or heard the warning whistle. The collision happened and people everywhere were now committing their valuable time to damage control. Looking at the end results, the mistakes were clearly evident. The question becomes: "How did so many big mistakes get by so many bright people and create an extremely costly comedy of errors." Answer the question, make the necessary changes and get on with correcting.