Famous Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan once wrote, “We look at the present through a rearview mirror; we walk backwards into our future.”
Today, silent problems are one of the greatest “rearview mirror” challenges facing every organization, every business, and every public institution. Such is the case surfacing in England, and reported about by Scott Eblin on his Next Level Blog. Scott reports:
Well, the story that’s dominating the UK’s headlines and airwaves this week is a controversy over how members of Parliament used their expense accounts for items like housekeeping, gardening and, in one infamous case, the digging of a moat. Sounds sort of outrageous doesn’t it? The back story, as my cab driver explained it to me the other day, is that when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister she wanted to give a pay raise to the MP’s but knew that wouldn’t fly with the public. So, instead, she adjusted the expense reimbursement schedule for MP’s so it was much more liberal and ended up significantly supplementing their incomes. That was all going along swimmingly for the past 20 years or so until earlier this year when the husband of the Home Secretary watched a couple of porn movies on the family telly and the cable bill was submitted for reimbursement under the MP expense plan. You can probably figure out what happened next… In case you can’t make it out, the passenger car is carrying 3 or 4 people holding prime minister Gordon Brown masks in front of their face. The sign across the top of the car reads, “All Aboard the Gravy Train.” As the Brits might say, “Simply brilliant!”
It’s obvious that an “offline” compensation program is doomed to failure, or what some might call, a scandal. It wasn’t a problem waiting to happen, it was a problem that had happened, it just took 20 years to surface. Now that it has surfaced, there is 20 years of baggage associated with the problem, which only gives it staying power and front page presence.
I’ve said it numerous times before on this blog, silent problems are the most dangerous problems of all. Because once they do surface, there is a lot of pent up emotion attached to them. “Beware” is the word of caution to those who are considering or holders of a silent problem.
