Every once in a while, a series of events goes across my radar that stimulates my otherwise dormant brain into thinking. This past week, I watched a cool fireworks display at a friend’s lake house while also watching neighbors shoot bottle rockets at each other, my son’s bicycle tires and seat were stolen from his bike outside a restaurant he was eating in, and I read an article in the NY Times about rampant stroller theft in New York.
Let’s take the bike first. It was chained up. Well, apparently, to be more accurate, the frame was chained up, but obviously not the wheels or seat. When I asked my son about what happened, he said, “I was only inside for a little while.”
On to strollers… I guess there are some pretty high-end strollers for sale these days, running upwards of $400-500. Nice! And I guess one of the attractions is that they are pretty heavy duty but sadly not that easy to carry up a flight of stairs. So there’s a tendency among stroller-owners to leave them outside while they run up to their apartments to drop off groceries or dry cleaning before getting on with other errands, which makes sense especially when you already have an infant in your arms. I imagine that’s all the time a stroller thief needs to make off with the goods, which I am told are easily sold on Craig’s List. Nice again!
Finally, not to put a damper on 4th of July celebrations, but there are always a few stories of over-enthusiastic or careless revelers who lose a finger, an eye, or worse from a fireworks ‘mishap’ this time of year.
As a leader, one of the most important things you can do is to continuously assess, manage and mitigate risks in your organization. What that means is, you have to be out in front – questioning what is prudent, thinking of ways to create “insurance policies” against the unthinkable, and generally being a wet blanket. The thanks you will get for this is not much more than walking out your office every day and seeing your stroller/bike/finger is still there. When you consider the alternative, I hope that’s thanks enough…
Here’s to a safe second half of 2011!
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