Boiling Frogs
Why do we overreact to crisis and ignore the real issues?
There’s a point raised in the Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté about how in British Columbia in 2021, more people died of opioid overdoses than Covid.
In my country, the hospital board nearest my hometown had an avoidable mortality rate of 270 people per 100,000. For context, Covid had a mortality rate of 325 people per 100,000 in the UK.
Avoidable mortality as a basic concept covers any deaths that are caused by conditions for which effective public health interventions are available.
When Covid hit we - quite rightly - implemented a response unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. There was action, everything stopped to deal with this crisis.
It might be borderline disingenuous to compare these mortality rates given one is population-wide and one is restricted to hospital visitors, but both are terrifyingly high rates and equally random.
One led to a fully unrestricted response and action, and one is treated as business as usual.
Another example of this is with housing. Right now there is something known as the viability gap in the property world. The basic concept is that anything north of Oxford is basically seen as being unviable as a construction project, which is to say that it costs more to build a house or office than can be earned when it is sold or valued (or at least not enough margin can be made to justify the investment).
This is a weird thing when you consider how much houses cost in 2023. The average cost of a house across the UK has more than doubled in the last 20 years, as I wrote about recently.
This viability gap isn’t something that your grandparents would know about (unless they really have their fingers on the pulse) but it is totally known and understood in the property sector and government.
The solution right now is to plug the gap with grants, but there are no indications that the situation is going to change and this is just a case of weathering the storm. But it is not a new issue, which is why we see so much public sector property development outside major city regions.
Hot Frogs
There is a temptation to overreact to a short sharp blast and underreact to the boiling frog. I think we probably all understand what I mean by the boiling frog, a situation which gets progressively worse until the point where it is too late or too much of a problem.
In our country, we have serious issues with our health system that have developed over the course of decades and will only get worse with issues such as an ageing population and conflicting agendas on how public services should be funded.
We have a housing crisis created by increasing costs, decreased supply, and unfettered international investment.
These issues are not going to be magically resolved. They need new ideas and new thinking but we’re running out of time in which to do it.
On the other hand, Covid showed us that we can react with urgency and pace, and with the sense of prioritising that which is the most important thing.
What we don’t see right now is public figures working through the night with the same level of attentiveness to the varied crises as we saw during the early days of Covid.
Wait-and-see
In the last 12 months, we have seen this challenge in real-time with the emergence of a whole new paradigm shift. Artificial intelligence is a game-changer, but so many experts are still recommending we wait and see what the impact is.
When Covid hit we didn’t have this sense of wait and see (or maybe we did if half of what is being shared through the Covid inquiry is true).
Publicly, there was no sense of let’s wait and see what the impact of Covid is. There was a quick reaction and a sharp reaction.
For anyone old enough to remember this was very similar when 9/11 happened. There was not a "let’s wait-and-see how the dust settles" reaction there was a “we must act and we must act fast" reaction.
The “War on Terror” was authorised by congress on September 14th just three days after the horrific day, and troops were in Afghanistan by October 7th.
Some situations require a quick-snap reaction more than a patient wait-and-see reaction. This might be when there appears to be an obvious path to retaliation or when there’s a sense that waiting just won’t cut it.
Sometimes there’s a sense that people need to be seen to be reacting, which I think is often the more dangerous element of this.
There is also the risk that waiting won’t do it. There might be a narrowing window to act, like we saw with Covid.
But running a business often this is more a case of that which is more urgent or more screaming out that just needs to be settled.
First Aid Training
When you do your first aid training, there’s a lot you need to remember, but one point that always stood out for me was the instruction for when you arrive at a scene: you have to focus on those who are silent over those who are screaming for your help.
If someone’s screaming for your help, it at least means they’re conscious, whereas those that are silent might need more urgent care and attention in order to be stabilised.
When you’re running a business whether it’s people, situations or challenges, it’s often the firefighting and the addressing the screaming patients that takes over and becomes the most important thing.
This is perfectly logical and right: the thing which is screaming for your attention is the thing that’s going to get the most of it.
Squeaky wheels etc..
The thing which has to be different for you as a leader is needing to actively seek those things which are not screaming, but which are bubbling away, and are just slowly boiling to the point at which it could become a really hot problem.
Renegotiation
In the last couple of years, I’ve had a couple of situations where there’s been a bit of a realisation that conditions have significantly changed on contracts from when they were originally signed.
Entering into a contract renegotiation process brings major upheaval, but also disruption, cost, and lots of uncomfortable conversations. They are also wildly unpredictable.
As I’ve been going through that process a lot of it reminds me of the Ben Horowitz book, the Hard Thing About Hard Things.
You have to accept that you’re going to go through some difficult periods of leadership in order to make sure that you’ve got a brighter future to look forward to.
It’s a bit more proactive than simply acceptance; you’ve got to seek it out and embrace it.
It can be quite tempting to just let the sleeping dog lie and not interfere with situations that are not screaming out for attention when there are so many other things that are desperate for your time and energy.
It’s hard to even consider, never mind justify, starting another drama or opening another difficult conversation or difficult process. That almost feels irresponsible in the heat of the moment.
But it’s a vital part of leadership, and I think that’s why I feel so frustrated about things like how the healthcare and housing systems are being treated right now.
I think sometimes politicians try to seek credit or a claim for making the tough decisions or for taking the tough path, but this really isn’t about taking credit. It’s about doing what’s right and the difference is not doing what’s right for you as the individual, but doing what’s right for a complex organisation.
If you’re standing up as a leader, or demanding people recognise you as that, you can’t take credit for what is a minimum expectation.
Who else has the responsibility to serve communities, maintain and sustain for generations?
Boiling frog issues can’t just be ignored. They have to be prioritised.
For you as a leader that means firstly spotting the frog that thinks it’s in a jacuzzi and telling it the truth.
It’s about trying to find other ways to spot those areas of your business where things might look calm just now, but could get out of control soon.
Gradually, Then Suddenly
There’s the quote from Ernest Hemingway about bankruptcy:
“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
There is a sense sometimes that these things come out of the blue.
That shares a lot of similarity to the idea of the overnight success a decade in the making.
These situations that appear gradual are often attributed to be quite sudden just at the end.
Things very rarely change all of a sudden. More often it is the gradual thing that is perceived to come out of the blue, which is really about bad or dishonest leadership.
It is the responsibility of the leader to know what is happening across-the-board. It is to ask those hard questions, to prod and to try to get a much clearer idea of what’s really going on under the hood and not just accept that things are looking rosy or that things are going swimmingly.
As you grow a business, it’s just human instinct to want to see the good things and only look for the points of encouragement.
I’ve covered this enough times when talking about the Mom Test by now. Looking for good news is addictive.
If you’re trying to grow something for the long-term, you need to accept that this isn’t your job. It is more important to see what’s in your blindspot to get a true tale of what’s happening with your business.
That’s a much surer route to a sustainable business.
This is what I want to see more from political leadership. It’s recognising that we’ve got a lot of boiling frogs right now, like healthcare and the environment, and we need to see the level of leadership and responsiveness that was involved in the early days of Covid.
After all, these issues are already creating as much, if not more, damage, but are not getting the same level of attention, scrutiny, and intervention.
If we had committees committing the level of energy, time, imagination, and financial investments as we saw during Covid then I think we might feel more optimistic than we currently do about some of these pressing issues.
Equally this isn’t to say that all of that intervention will be a positive.
In this scenario no intervention or attention signals that we are not taking these issues seriously, and that is much more worrying than just sitting by and watching the boiled frog perish.
Gradually, then suddenly.
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