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I wonder how the guy who said, “There are no problems, only opportunities,” would explain New Orleans.

The combination of tragedy, mind-boggling incompetence, and failure to prepare for a long-predicted preventable catastrophe is a problem. For all of us. If it’s an opportunity, it’s to remind us of a few basic facts effective leaders, including IT leaders, can’t ignore.

Blaming the victim takes less effort and is more satisfying than understanding the situation.

A popular talking point is that “they” don’t deserve sympathy, since “they” built a city five feet below sea level. Let’s not stop there: Nobody gets any help after a disaster unless it couldn’t have happened where they live. A lot of the Netherlands used to be sea bottom. Forget them! Californians? They chose to live near an earthquake fault, as Floridians chose to live in a hurricane zone. As a Minnesotan I think it’s a fair policy, so long as we Midwesterners get help after tornadoes, blizzards and spring floods. We live here to avoid the earthquakes and hurricanes, after all.

Of course, only parts of New Orleans are below sea level, and it’s been sinking at a rate of three feet per century — do the math. When, exactly, was everyone was supposed to pack up and leave?

Lesson for IT: When someone’s PC stops working don’t crab at them and don’t assume they’re morons who went out of their way to annoy you. Help them solve their problem. Uh … opportunity.

Achieving a leadership position bestows neither expertise nor acumen on the ignorant.

Three of the top five executives in FEMA had no experience or training in managing emergencies. Expertise does matter.

Lesson for IT: Some CIOs have no technical background. If you’re one of them, seek out the best engineers in your organization — those with the most knowledge and best judgment. Spend a lot of time listening to them. Doing so isn’t a sign of weakness. Failing to do so is.

This is how you can make sure you get early warnings about problems while they’re still solvable. Don’t rely solely on your chain of command. Develop direct relationships with your experts, too.

Turning your back on a problem doesn’t put the problem behind you.

Politicians of both political parties ignored the clear, loud warnings of scientists and engineers that that the drowning of New Orleans was inevitable. This, for example, appeared in Scientific American in 2001:

A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city.

If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. “As the water recedes,” says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, “we expect to find a lot of dead bodies.”

Mike Parker, former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, showed Mitch Daniels, then Director of the OMB, two pieces of steel. One was new, the other had spent 30 years under water in a Mississippi lock and was completely corroded. Complaining about a 33% budget reduction in 2002, he said, “Mitch, it doesn’t matter if a terrorist blows the lock up or if it falls down because it disintegrates — either way it’s the same effect, and if we let it fall down, we have only ourselves to blame.” Shortly thereafter, Daniels made sure Parker was fired.

While maintenance funds were being cut, Representative Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) made sure Congress allocated $194 million to increase capacity for barge traffic while barge traffic had been steadily declining and the Army Corps of Engineers had advised against the project. Meanwhile, Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) obtained $230 million to build a bridge connecting a city of 8,000 to an island with 50 inhabitants.

Lesson for IT: Don’t allocate budget to placate political constituencies in your company until after you’ve taken care of business.

An ounce of prevention continues to be less expensive and more convenient than a pound of cure.

Beefing up the levee would have cost less than $30 million. The cost of failing to do so will be at least a thousand times more.

Lesson for IT: It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

Last, beat-the-dead-horse word on all of this: Managers deal with financial and political realities. Engineers deal with the reality imposed by the laws of physics.

In the end, engineering does matter.

ManagementSpeak: Now what would that look like in our environment?

Translation: I have no idea what you are talking about nor do I want to think about it.

This week’s anonymous contributor had the right idea regarding what her manager was talking about.

Writers obsess about word choice.

No, that isn’t precisely true: Writers pay attention to word choice.

No again. That’s a generalization. “Writers” is too big a group to generalize from. It’s wordsmiths I’m writing about, and not all wordsmiths – just the best ones.

Word maestros choose words the way a cuisinier chooses spices.

Does this mean that if you aren’t a professional writer then it’s okay to rely on “thing” as a general-purpose noun, to be hauled out in place of the word that means what you’re trying to talk about?

In a word, no.

Nor is precision the only issue at stake when you decide how much you want to care if you’ve chosen the optimal term. How you say what you say affects you, just as much as it conveys meaning to those you’re speaking to.

There was, for example, the colleague who, in a conversation about office politics, referred to a mutual acquaintance as his “enemy.”

Enemy. Out of every word available to him in his lexicographic warehouse … opponent, adversary, rival, antagonist … he chose the most extreme item in his inventory.

So far as intentions are concerned, I’m confident my associate was merely too lazy to select a less extreme alternative. He wasn’t a bad person.

But we all know what the road to hell is paved with. And calling someone an enemy legitimizes forms of political weaponry more vicious and unsavory than what labeling them your “rival” would suggest are acceptable.

Calling them your enemy, that is, makes them deserve to be your victim.

In a business setting, if you hear anyone among your direct or indirect reports refer to anyone as their enemy, take the opportunity to school them in how inappropriate it is, not to mention organizationally damaging.

That’s different from hearing expressions of rivalry, something that can, pointed in a productive direction, be useful. Do too much to suppress feelings of rivalry and you’ll find that you’ve discouraged smart people from pointing out the flaws in unfortunate ideas, or from suggesting potentially superior alternatives.

Sure, I know you’re busy. And yes, I understand that attending to word choice slows you down.

But allow me to suggest a reframing that might change your attitude about such matters: Choosing the right superlative instead of mindlessly typing “g-r-e-a-t,” … or on the other end of the semantic continuum, finding a term of disparagement more potent than the ever-present “b-a-d” … can be fun.

I might almost suggest that as hobbies go, this one is outstanding.

Bob’s last word: In our national dialog (multilog?) I’ve read lots of opinion pieces that try to explain how it’s all become so toxic and what to do about it.

One I haven’t run across is lazy word choice.

Once upon a time, Grover Norquist famously introduced the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. It had an outsized impact on fiscal policy.

So in that vein, might I suggest some enterprising reader should create the Vocabulary Protection Pledge? Sample phrasing: “Whenever I’m speaking where anyone might hear, I will carefully choose only the most precise words when explaining my ideas.”

It might not stop Empty Green from blathering about Jewish Space Lasers, but as is the case with chicken soup to treat assorted maladies, it wouldn’t hurt.

And anyway, if Jews really did have space lasers, I know whose posterior would be first in line to get zapped.

Bob’s bragging rights: In case you missed the news last week, I’m proud to tell you my long-suffering CIO.com editor, Jason Snyder and I have been awarded a Silver Tabbie award from Trade Association Business Publications International, for my monthly feature, the CIO Survival Guide. Regarding the award, they say, “This blog scores highly for the consistent addressing of the readers’ challenges, backed by insightful examples and application to current events.“

Speaking of which, this week on the (ahem) award-winning CIO Survival Guide: “The CIO’s fatal flaw: Too much leadership, not enough management.” Its point: Compared to management, leadership is what has the mystique. But mystique isn’t what gets work out the door.