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Disastrous health problem in India
In the mid-1990s, mortality rates in certain regions of India began to rise. It was unclear why people were dying, but the problems seemed to be greatest in densely populated urban areas. Soon after, they discovered that the number of vultures also declined dramatically. Not too long ago, almost 50 million vultures were alive, but 97% disappeared since.
In India, the cow is sacred and may not be eaten. As soon as a cow died, the vultures would swoop down and eat the carcass in no time. It was a fantastic system for waste management and disease prevention, but since there are almost no vultures left and so, cow carcasses keep lying around for a long time.
Domino effect
Bacteria and pathogens ended up in the drinking water and spread quickly. Although stray dogs took over the role of the vultures, they were far less effective at cleaning up rotting remains and became sick themselves. This led to more dog-related problems, such as aggression and an increase in rabies, which had serious consequences for public health. Eventually, around 100,000 people died each year.
Further investigation revealed that the vultures died from kidney failure. The cow carcasses they ate were full of diclofenac, a cheap painkiller that works well for cattle but is deadly for vultures. As farmers began to give this drug to their sick cows more often and in larger quantities, the mortality rate among the vultures also increased.
Opportunism and quick fixes
Instead of slowing down to discover the root of the problem, people prefer the fast track. They don’t understand that most quick fixes lead to much extra rework, energy, time, and costs. In the example of the vulture deaths in India, Elam Pharma quickly came up with a solution to cure sick cows with medicines, and the farmers desperately jumped in. Elam Pharma made millions. Ultimately, the consequential damage was enormous, and it is estimated it cost Indian society around 32 billion euros a year.
"Band-aid on band-aid"
When solving problems, most of the time, there is not a proper investigation to understand what is really going on, and opportunistic and reductionist actions are taken to quickly get to a solution. In doing so, we lose sight of the bigger picture, and the implemented solutions turn out suboptimal, often causing new problems. We end up in a vicious circle.
This phenomenon of compartmentalisation is everywhere around us. Take the government. Whenever there is a complex problem, they divide it across different ministries, resulting in unsensible and impractical policies.
Pillarisation and internal competition
This also happens in many organisations. Departments such as strategy, innovation, sustainability, (digital) transformation, IT and D&I hardly work together, while they have a lot in common and ultimately share the same goal. They compete with each other for the same resources to achieve their KPIs and seem to forget they are all in the same boat.
Instead of working together, they work against each other. Everyone works hard trying to solve problems caused by the other departments. They go in circles, and the organisation does not move forward while the real issues remain unsolved or worsen.
It starts with the right question
It often pays to dwell on the problem because you come to different insights when you dig deeper. Years ago, Jerry Sternin of Save the Children was asked to tackle the malnutrition of Vietnamese children. He went into the villages to talk to residents and see with his own eyes what was going on. He discovered there were also poor families with healthy children.
Rather than thinking about how to get the logistics of a large food distribution program off the ground, he asked himself, “How come children of these poor families are healthy?” The insights he gained from his exploration helped him set up a program that used local food sources which were not seen as food for people, solving the problem more structurally.
In the case of the vultures in India, the question should not have been “How do we get the cows healthy again?” but “Why do these cows get sick?”
This article was originally published in Dutch on MT/Sprout, the most popular business and management platform in the Netherlands.
CHRO.nl
September 18, 2024
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