Indian cities have many minor accidents. There’s a few hundred million trying to get to places on time and at maximum possible speed (read: 30 kilometres/hour). In a bid to reduce the number of accidents caused by excessive speeding, the city of Bangalore has a speed bump in many areas of the city every few metres. Literally. driving in Bangalore is a frustrating experience because you are stuck in a perpetual loop of increasing speed and then slowing down. This isn’t helped by the fact that, in typical Indian fashion, there is no consistency between the size of the bumps.
This strikes me as a problem born out of solving potential problems isolated. I find it hard to believe that the cost of speeding related accidents outweigh frequent traffic jams, driver frustration, damaged clutch pates, other wear and tear, and the higher petrol costs that come with the constant speeding up and slowing down required. Could we just have had stricter clamp downs on speeding and mobile phone use instead?
Solving potential problems isolated arises due to an inability to ask deeper questions. It feels like a quick win. For example, a big reason exercise related new year’s resolutions break down is because people try to desperately fit in their exercise commitment into their schedule. So, if they’re out of time during the day, they decide to sleep an hour less to keep that commitment. It feels right. It feels like a win. But it isn’t. If that happens for two days in a row, the same person will lose productivity, become increasingly unhappy, and perhaps even unhealthy. The only way to solve that problem is to thoughtfully look at our whole day’s schedule and see where we might fit in the new pretender in. What started as an exercise problem soon becomes a scheduling problem and what begins as a scheduling problem soon becomes a priority and attitude problem.
Beware quick isolated solutions to problems. If the solution hasn’t been crafted thoughtfully, it probably hasn’t been done well. As you might have figured, this process isn’t about finding that quick answer. Google can do that. It’s about asking a few good questions. No one but you can do that..
A Learning a Day 