The pilot who successfully lands the crippled airliner gets the headlines. So does the emergency room doctor who restarts the heart of a 53-year old man.
As they should. These are extraordinary efforts that lead directly to saved lives.
Plus, it’s easy to point at “who did it.” Headlines love who did it.
What about the engineer who designed a redundant switching mechanism in the aileron control system? That system has never once failed over the lifetime of the aircraft fleet on which it has been installed for over 30 years.
What about the 53-year-old man who changed his lifestyle ten years ago and is now healthier than he was at 40?
If nothing bad or dramatic happens, it’s harder to point at who did it.
But that doesn’t mean somebody didn’t do it. As a leader, your job is to look under the covers, past the mundane, and point at who did it.
