Last week I watched portions of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s hearing with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the error-riddled healthcare.gov website. Republicans and Democrats alike spent a significant amount of time asking Ms. Sebelius questions that had nothing to do with the website, such as whether President Barack Obama was her boss and why Colorado’s advertisements for its exchange featured beer. The session, which lasted more than three hours, was not solution-oriented.
Commander Hadfield’s advice is two-pronged. One is anticipating things that might kill you. For HHS, this would be anticipating what could go wrong with the launch of healthcare.gov. At this point, it’s safe to say the agency’s risk assessment was deeply flawed. Secretary Sebelius took the blame in the hearing last week, but her accountability doesn’t make up for what seems to be a pretty big communication and IT breakdown.
The commander’s second piece of advice, approaching problems in a calm, measured and solution-minded manner, was nowhere to be found in that hearing room last week. Few opted to take the approach of, “What can we do to make this better?” Rather, politicians opted to point fingers, make odd metaphors and ask rhetorical questions. It became vaudeville.
This isn’t much of a surprise, given Congress’ track record as of late, but watching such banter after hearing Commander Hadfield’s thoughts about problem-solving made the healthcare.gov debacle and its subsequent problem-solving seem all the more absurd. It’s interesting how such clear thinking is reserved for life-or-death moments. How many problems would be better solved in healthcare, and many other industries, if Commander Hadfield’s advice wasn’t reserved for takeoffs and moonwalks?
