Impact
Decisions of this scale are made in boardrooms where the view outside looks nothing like this. The distance between the room where a decision is taken and the place where its consequences occur is not merely geographical. It is moral. It’s human nature that the further you are from what your decision produces, the easier it is to take.
Here, lining the highway, in careful rows, flowering bushes have been planted as if colour and beauty might soften what that decision cannot hide. It is an attempt at remediation. But by the time you are planting flowers, the decision has already made its impact.
The same dynamic plays out in decisions far less visible than this. The choice to fly rather than take the train. The online order that generates several deliveries when one trip to the shops would have done the same job. In each case the consequence is real; it is simply not present at the moment the decision is made.
This extends to decisions at every level, wherever the person making the choice is insulated from its consequences. The restructure announced by a leadership team who will not see the faces of the people it affects. The policy approved by those who will never live under it. The target set by someone who will not be present when those responsible for meeting it work out what it actually costs. Distance from consequence is one of the least examined aspects of how we make decisions at every level.
If you could see the full consequence of your decisions, would you make them differently?
David R. Smith