In this article in The New York Times today, Denise Grady explains that for the first time in our history, the US military has been performing CT scans and X-rays of our war dead since 2004, and the lessons learned have caused changes in many areas. I spend most of my days encouraging people to start their discussions around the specific outcomes they are achieving, the “what” they are doing before asking how to get there. Getting statistics on how people are dying in wars, and in fact how to better treat the injured is enabling the military to improve many outcomes, not the least of which is bringing soldiers home breathing.
The article talks about how the x-rays show not only the specifics of the shrapnel that kills the soldiers, but also where the shrapnel hits, so they are able to improve the designs of protective gear. If you are smarter about what’s coming at you, you can be better at preparing for it in the future, a simple lesson in competition for people in the business world.
But the part I liked best about this story involved improving a technique to help injured soldiers. It had to do with a Colonel Howard T. Harcke who was doing an autopsy on a soldier who had a collapsed ling. As you can read in the article, Colonel Harcke figured out that the tubes they were using to re-inflate lungs were almost a third too short. He could see from the CT scan that the tube was too short to be effective in this one case, but because this case had so many other severe injuries, he couldn’t confirm that was the cause of death, but by being able to look at 100 other similar cases in the data base, he found that the tube was too short for 50% of the group he looked at, and came to the conclusion that “solders are bigger and stronger now” and it’s no secret that our population has gotten bigger. Going from the current five centimeter length to eight centimeters increased the effectiveness to 99% (so going from a 50% effectiveness rate, that doubles the effectiveness of a common procedure, doubling anything in medicine in this century is nothing short of kooky), What a great example of using a set of data to help answer a question about a single instance.
There is so much information about what has happened in the past that can inform how we move forward and post mortems in the workplace can make a huge impact. Just be thankful you are not in a life and death battle every day like the people Colonel Harcke has to work on.
-Ric
Ric, I think I got you on this one. The question is: “Should politician start re-thinking their alternative policies for the “What” outcome rather than the “How” improvement?” A case in point, some 30 years back, a government massive research conducted for President Carter called: “The Global 2000 Report To The President” shows, via computer comprehensive simulation modeling, “If the US will do nothing for the underdeveloped countries regarding the diminishing natural and economic global resources that; famine, wars, unstable governance and ethnic cleansing will take place by the end of the century.” And, as we have witnessed that happened and still is happening…In another word, the results of the Global 2000 research were not considered to mitigate future anticipated catastrophic projections. When President Regan came into power, re-thinking using the “What Outcome” was ignored and business as usual was conducted, utilizing the dark side of the human nature process. That is, we kept an eye on the continuous improvements, small if any, by utilizing the same process vehicle, rather than out-of-the-box re-thinking that can enable the potential quantum outcome instead. Is it time, politicians should be directed and educated to re-think the process and learned from what proved to earn quantum successes in business. I mean do we have here a case of “Politics Post Mortems?”
That’s absolutely right. Very well put.