It’s been famously reported that Harry Truman, when he heard that General Eisenhower had been elected to succeed him as the President of the United States in 1952, (General Eisenhower had been the supreme commander of the Allied forces as they launched the Normandy invasion that eventually led to the ending of the second World War,) said, “Poor Ike! He’s used to giving orders and having someone carry them out. Here in this White House, orders can be given and no one does a damn thing!”
So that was what it was like even in the White House almost 70 years ago – but we are constantly coming across examples of this sort of thing, even in 2019.
But, as we keep saying, the developments in communication technology in the last 30 or so years have changed the whole world, and in no area more so than in providing a means, a tool, a mechanism, to make people and organisations more accountable – it’s made it kindergarten stuff.
What we’d say to President Truman and President Eisenhower in 2019 would be – “Send out emails along the lines of, ‘Remember how I asked you to do such and such last Thursday – how are you going with it?'” It would take less that 5 minutes to send out such emails and it would change EVERYTHING!
The problem is that most of the President Trumans and the President Eisenhowers in 2019 don’t do it because they don’t care. It takes two things – the modern communication technology and the people at the top caring And we are always coming across examples of the people at the top not caring.
As an example.
In this post we told of how a certain email had been sent to Bupa Aged Care on 14 Mar. 2019 resulting in an automated response coming back immediately saying, “We will respond to you within two business days” – and 38 days later, nothing!
Bupa Aged Care claims to have more than 70 care homes in Australia.
The email that was sent was about what appeared to be an extremely concerning occurrence in one of their homes. You’d think that one of the people in their top management might have sent out an email to the appropriate person in their organisation along the lines of, “Why the hell hasn’t a response been sent out in 38 days when we said we’d respond in 2 days? – it’s making us look like idiots!” But this sort of thing doesn’t seem to happen, particularly with larger organisations like the Bupas of this world.
BUT, and these are the main points of this post – it’s within the power of us, the people, to send out emails just like anyone else, and, wherever possible, to choose to not deal with those who refuse to be accountable for what they do and say. AND, nothing much is likely to change until more and more people start doing this.