Image via Wikipedia
Suppose you’re exercising and start to feel shaky. You get kind of clammy and you’re sweating profusely. Sure, you haven’t eaten yet and maybe you should have been drinking more water as you went, but right now you know you’re in trouble.
So you call an ambulance just to be on the safe side, especially since you feel as if you might pass out. There are probably 100 thoughts going through your mind but one of them isn’t “will the ambulance show up” or even “will someone answer 911”, right?
This next little bit isn’t political – it’s meant as food for thought. Communities all over the country are dealing with budget issues – how to raise revenues, how do we only spend money things that matter. Of course – “what matters” may not be the same in everyone’s mind – people without kids might not care about schools, etc. In some places, they’re closing firehouses and cutting police and other emergency services. So maybe that ambulance DOESN’T show up, at least not for a while. And that’s the business point as well.
Every company is going through the same exercise – do we need a receptionist, maybe we don’t need internal audit, why are we paying for backup serves when we’ve never had a problem? It’s a critical exercise, both for governments and businesses. But here’s the thing: the decisions are often taken without thinking through some of the less-obvious ramifications. Less-attractive schools = lower real-estate values. No receptionist = phones going unanswered = lower customer service. No disaster plan with back-ups in place = maybe the end of your web-based business.
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the EMS service in town just as I don’t worry a lot about backing up my files. I did have a computer disaster recently – the back-ups are fine. Hopefully I’ll not have to call EMS but I see in the paper lots of folks do and the service is top-notch. It’s money well-spent and too many easy decisions are made to stop spending on preventative (read finance, marketing, and product development) areas in the name of preserving near-term “fiscal responsibility.” I’d argue that’s anything but responsible.
You?
Consult Keith 