Where were you on the day of the 2013 Boston Marathon? You will probably never forget what you were doing that day. Who could have anticipated that bombs would forever shatter the futures of so many people just out for a day of fun and fulfillment? Even in a post-9/11 world, when we have become hyper-conscious of the potential dangers around us, it was impossible for us to imagine our lives could be endangered so close to home, simply by sharing an annual tradition with friends and family, or even just going to work.
One of the hardest things about risk planning is that you have to get specific about all the terrible things that could happen. In everyday life, if we sat around worrying about the possibility of getting hit by a bus on the way to the supermarket or contracting a case of flesh-eating disease, we would never go anywhere or do anything. But for project managers, it’s our job to spell out the worst case scenarios. For instance, an earthquake could damage a data center, causing vital information to stop flowing to the hospital. I had a friend who was a power engineer for the Longwood Medical Area, and he had a huge list of problems that could occur to shut down all the life-saving machines in the ICUs of all our hospitals. Today that list probably contains a scenario involving a terrorist attack.
Are we so brave in our project risk planning? I’ve noticed that a lot of risk plans contain generic scenarios, like “users won’t be able to adjust to the new system” or “we won’t have enough resources during project implementation”. But what are the real risks here? If the new system involves receiving claims payment, the real risk is that claims won’t get paid, thus jeopardizing the hospital’s ability to stay open. And if the unavailable resources cause physicians’ orders to stop flowing through the system, patients won’t get the proper care. At Dana-Farber, that’s a matter of life and death.
My favorite blogger, John Halamka (geekdoctor.blogspot.com), CIO at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, shared that seven of his staff members were volunteers at the medical tent and finish line on the day of the marathon. None of his staff was harmed, but he wrote that “as we think about risk planning in the future, we’ll need to consider the events of last week when told something as innocent as ‘the majority of the database administration team is going to volunteer at the marathon.'”
It brought to mind one day in August 2011 when many of us in the office felt our chairs rocking. The first thing we did was to wonder aloud what it was. Next, we got on the internet and confirmed that we were feeling the ripple effect of a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that had hit Virginia. The third step, however, was unsettling. After a few minutes of reading the internet updates, I looked around and noticed that I was completely alone. It turned out that everyone had run outside, but no one had stopped by my desk to let me know. By the time I figured out what was happening, all my colleagues were out on the street. I have to tell you, I was doing some serious risk assessment in my head and it wasn’t pretty!
So the week after Boston was locked down during the manhunt for the bombing suspect, our team talked about how we handled our response to these events. We pieced together a series of emails in which we had informed each other of our whereabouts and our plans for the day. Luckily, we all fared well and stayed safe. But we asked ourselves: could we do anything differently during the next catastrophic occurrence? Our conclusion was simple enough: one person would be responsible for calling anyone we hadn’t heard from and report back to the group. This simple plan made me feel a lot better about the next time.
None of us will forget the 2013 Boston Marathon, and we all hope it will turn out better next year. But as Liz Walker, former Boston news anchor and now Presbyterian minister, told the Globe in an interview following that fateful day, “part of the healing process may be learning to live with fear.”
Risk planning is not just an exercise; it’s a way to prepare for a future in which we all must manage fear on a daily basis.
It is indeed very hard to plan for a major catastrophe. As much as the Boston Marathon events were hard for all of us and it is certainly hard to live in fear, your posting brought something else to mind: planning for old age. This has been hard for me: to plan for retirement and possibly illness and higher health care bills. How do you find ways to think about yourself and loved ones when you are old? Most people don’t want to think about that (specially in our youth). However, specialists say that the younger you are when you start planning the better you will fare. I am 20 years away from retirement and find that all the planning and thinking about me as an old man takes a toll on my mind. However, I must do it. So the specialists tell me…..l