The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

I once worked in a NASA research center. One of the fellows there was very old school and would tell us stories about working on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. One story he told was about the pilot centrifuges, those devices most people remember from 1950's science-fiction movies. They strap an astronaut in and whirl him or her around faster and faster to see how well he or she can withstand increasing g forces.

One time a piece of the centrifuge came loose. It went flying off while the rest of the centrifuge kept spinning. The piece that came loose smashed through some glass and damaged a wall.

Realizing things like this could happen again, the folks at NASA took steps to prevent more broken glass and damaged walls; they placed a net in the exact spot where the piece had come loose before.

Budda-boom.

Planning for disaster is easy. Incredibly easy. It's easy to do because disaster is repeatable and what's repeatable is calculable. This is what insurance companies do all the time. "What's the likelihood of the creek rising and flooding your house?" The answer is determined by figuring out how often the creek rises to a point where your house will be flooded. This highest recorded creek rise is usually given a term such as "hundred year mark", meaning the creek will rise this high about once every hundred years. Is your house above that mark? Then chances are you're good for at least 100 years.

Simple. Except in my neighborhood in NH the creek rose past its hundred year mark twice in two years.

And this is where simple meets calculable. Figure out the hundred year mark (done). Now look for trends in rainfall, snowfall, etc., that demonstrate increasing ground water saturations over time. Determine run off rates versus accumulation rates.

Now take the hundred year mark and add the difference between ground water accumulation and run off. Based on all this, will the creek flood your house?

The real difference is that simple by itself is relatively inexpensive. Simple teamed with calculable is much more expensive than simple all by itself. Placing a net at the point on the centrifuge's arc was a simple solution that didn't take into account stress tendencies in the centrifuge hardware itself. In other words, the simple solution was a solution to what happened, not what caused it to happen.

So is another 9/11 preventable? Oh yes, simple. We just make sure no Muslims get on planes that will be near tall buildings. While we're at it, we should also make sure Italians (I'm Italian) can't get on planes either because, after all, there's not a lot of difference between Italians and Muslims. And let's not forget short people. Randy Newman was right, after all. And what about the Spanish, or the Irish, or ...umm...Gay/Straight/Tall/Short/Old/Young Men. But only the left-handed ones. Especially if they're red heads.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Is another 9/11 preventable? Oh yes, simple and calculable. We need to combat poverty and ignorance. (Hold on. I'm rummaging through my cliche bag).

Who gets to define what poverty and ignorance are? They're quite relative, too. Is an atheist ignorant in the mind of a born-again christian? Is a christian an atheist in the mind of a muslim? Are bhuddists agnostic in the minds of the  Jivaro?

And what is "poor"? I have two cows and a pig. Eban has only a pig and he must give that up if his daughter is to marry because one of her eyes isn't straight. What makes you think I'm poor?

The greatest way to prevent "9/11" types of disasters is to understand and respect others, to honor their ways and their beliefs, and to recognize that your ways may be just as invalid in their setting as others' ways may be in yours.

Take a look at NextStage's Principles and you'll get an idea, I think.

Don't solve problems that aren't happening. Solve the causes of problems before problems occur. Much more expensive initially, much longer lasting, and that's amortization.

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