But It’s Not Too Soon to Capture Lessons Learned While We Fight
The Close-In Fight
Back in my days as a combat arms officer in the Army, we would refer to the “close-in fight.” This was when the fighting got really close and personal. Wherein you often saw the face of the opposing soldiers, knowing that at the end of battle one group would live to fight another day, and one would not.
At that point, not much beyond what was happening right around you mattered. This was when your planning, resourcing, strategy, and training worked – or did not. It was too late to adjust any of that now. Now, the call is to engage the enemy and hope for the best. Not much time or energy for anything beyond this fight, right now, right here.
We are approaching that close-in fight with Covid-19. Some, especially in New York and a few other places, are effectively already there. We can see what is coming for the rest of us and it is sobering, to say the least. I always said that I did not want to fight along someone who was not at least a little frightened of what was coming.
I think it safe to say that in this battle, while some were foolishly flippant about this fight earlier, pretty well no one is of that mindset anymore (give or take a couple of blindingly stupid governors (I am talking to you, Georgia and Iowa). The fight is on – now.
There Is Another Key Task Right Now
As important and all-consuming as this fight is, we need desperately to put some time and resources into capturing hard learned lessons so that when this is finally over, we know what we need to work on. The list is long.
We will return to this “lessons learned” theme more than once in the weeks and months ahead in this space, but for now, let’s highlight a few that we dare not let escape. History, as they say, often repeats itself.
One reason for that is that people and organizations are pretty lousy at capturing lessons, doing post activities reviews, and building get-well plans. Even when we do, the results often wind up sitting on a shelf somewhere, not acted upon, not tracked for results.
This fight will prove to be too important, too expensive (in lives, too), and too predictive (this will happen again) to simply be glad it’s finally gone and we just get back to life as we knew it.
We already know that many have or will die needlessly for lack of government direction and capacity. If we don’t do lessons learned seriously, we have denied the last opportunity to give at least some meaning to those losses.
A Short Initial List
Consider these for starters.
Logistics
Critical Supplies – One reason there has been such a shortage of medical masks and similar protective gear is that the area of China that was first hit by this virus is a major global manufacturing center for such items. Turns out America gets a huge share of such supplies from this region.
What other supplies are dependent on one foreign supplier, or even one domestic supplier? Government needs to catalog that information, keep it current, and develop alternate suppliers, even if not cost efficient to do so.
My rule in military logistics was that you never needed one of anything. If I needed one, I needed a backup for when the one is used up or destroyed. Not a bad approach to apply here as well.
Roles and Missions
Lock In The Role of the Federal Government – In candor, most of us thought this was obvious – until this administration. Trump famously said “we are not supply clerks” when asked about helping states obtain supplies. The result is a free market free for all, with irrational shortages, price gouging, and no one in charge.
We know how to do this. It appears Congress needs to mandate by legislation the responsibility of the national government in large scale crisis, especially in coordinating shortages of people, equipment, and personnel.
I watched LTG (retired) Russel Honore on TV this week. He was angry, to put it mildly, and frustrated at what is going on (watch yourself: https://www.msnbc.com/ali-velshi/watch/lt-gen-honore-if-we-don-t-discipline-we-ll-have-a-mess-on-our-hands-81070149512 . You may recall him as the man the government turned to when New Orleans was going down for the count after hurricane Katrina. His service as commander of Joint Task Force Katrina was a model of how to marshal resources and inspire hope. Honore correctly states that we know how to do all this, we have the skills, experience, and resources.
That we are not doing it is a moral crime. Legislation is difficult to write for every contingency and it should not be necessary to have such directives. But we cannot let this happen again.
Take Care of the Heroes
Do the Right Thing -Doctors, nurses, many others in medicine are working under incredible conditions for extended periods, often without needed resources. When this is over, we need not only thank them, but help make them whole.
Many will be broken by this experience. Combat does that. Some are made stronger, others are broken. None know which group they will be in until thier turn in the crucible comes. They all need our support.
Someone has suggested wiping out student debt for any medical person or first responder who carried this fight. Sign me up – splendid idea.
And while we are at it, how about all those people who worked to ensure the rest of us had food to eat? People working in grocery stores, surrounded by potential virus carriers, and no one with masks or gloves for weeks.
How about delivery drivers and postal carriers who came into contact with hundreds of people daily, all to ensure the rest of us had what we needed, including a small bit of normalcy?
Enough for One Outing
We could all easily list 50 more areas worthy of examination and remediation. What are your thoughts? Who else carried the burden for the rest of us? What else is on top of your Fix It list?
More to follow. Stay well, wash your hands, stay away from each other, and hunker down – we have some distance to go yet.
Bill Clontz (some time ago….)
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This is your best.
We are in close and we are varying degrees of frightened of so many things…the welfare of our close family and friends, our own welfare, the literal future of our country? Will we learn the lessons? Can we learn the lessons? What needs changing going forward?
Thank you very much. You have expanded my thinking. Sue Walton
It’s the least I can do, Sue. You so often help me expand my thinking.
Wonderful article, Bill. We Americans forgive and forget too quickly, historically. Hopefully, we will remember that many warnings were given by many experts and other knowledgeable people, and ignored. November is not that far away, and that will be the right time and the right way to acknowledge the ignorance displayed by our current leadership,
Cannot be November soon enough!
Thanks for a timely and important post. As one who often is called on to document lessons-learned, I recognize the importance of this exercise. One important lesson we might re-learn is that we can’t let ourselves be so vulnerable to leadership weakness and incompetence at the very top. Let’s reinvigorate our checks-and-balances government as it was designed. PS, nice pic!
Good words from someone who does indeed, I know first-hand, understand the value of lessons learned. Right you are on vulnerabilities found with inadequate leadership. Hard to legislate adequately for incompetence this bad, but we certainly have to try, don’t we?
Ah, the picture. I have obviously stayed in shape. I still wear the same size…. boots.