The Costs of Caution

Some wise words on organizational learning and how a business process develops over time:

The gradual accumulation of checks in an organization is a kind of learning, based on disasters that have happened to it or others like it.

Key point:

Whenever someone in an organization proposes to add a new check, they should have to explain not just the benefit but the cost. No matter how bad a job they did of analyzing it, this meta-check would at least remind everyone there had to be a cost, and send them looking for it.

If I taught an MBA class, you better believe this would be in it.