You’re so right - the key point, really: “There is always a single individual who had the power and responsibility to do something but didn’t.”

The question is why didn’t he or she? It’s a fascinating question I think, and one that unearths just as many actionable insights as more positive phenomena do about how to encourage and develop effective executives to combat it.

This topic probably deserves more discussion.

Thanks again, Steve!

Well, it was a great post, and fit the occasion perfectly - it was my pleasure.

And what a great analogy you drew with the post in your comment.

Thanks again, and keep up the innovative writing on education!

That’s a great catch, Wally - thanks! Target fixation. That’s a big cause of this, that’s right.

Sometimes the decision alone closes, narrows your options, denying you perspective that could draw you out of the narrowing trap you’re entering.

Sometimes each decision carries with it a perceptual framework that does that (dysfunctional) job even more effectively.

And the thing is, the intensity of the work can cause the whole team to get lost in the target fixation, so no one is able to see the approaching danger.

It’s like a high-performance aerial acrobatic team, like the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels. Some of the maneuvers are so intricate and unforgiving that all the wingmen must focus exclusively on their relative position to the leader, and the leader focuses in turn on the necessary landmarks. If the leader gets lost in one of those landmarks, the whole team piles into it.

Thanks Wally!

Wally’s reasons are sure familiar ones.

I would imagine that the root causes vary if you investigate each case. Yet the question still remains, “Who was responsible for oversight and why wasn’t it carried out?”

There is always a single individual who had the power and responsibility to do something but didn’t.

That’s why we’re so hot on continuing to encourage and develop effective leaders.

You end up with one strange looking bridge; occasionally functional, ugly, and over budget.

And there’s the confusion of a sunk cost with an investment. The understanding of those two concepts is reason enough to require every manager to take an economics course.