The Best Laid Plans...

I spend the majority of my waking hours at work or in a car. This is common for the average person. I bring this up because given that on any given day, I spend approximately 11 hours of my day either inside my building or inside my car. Needless to say, that's where most of my thinking takes place. My latest revelation pulls examples from my everyday experiences.

There is a famous quote that goes "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / go oft awry." A book I've never read, but a quote I enjoy.

Now, I'm a strong advocate of planning, and without realizing it, we take for granted how many things in this world are actually planned out to the smallest detail. From the label on your water bottle to the flight schedules at an airport, there aren't many aspects of life that didn't receive a great amount of attention and planning.

I opened with that work/car explanation because when you're so engrossed in something, it's easiest to take examples from what you know. Admittedly already confessing my distaste for traffic, I realized something recently. Besides just tacking on lane after lane until it takes 10 minutes to cross the road, I'm always wondering why our road systems weren't designed better to increase the flow of traffic and alleviate the bottle necks and traffic jams. Every single day I witness the follies of our 'expressway' system, crawling past exit after exit at the pace of a small child riding a Powerwheels. Aren't there people out there smart enough to orchestrate a scheme that allows for high capacity work traffic? Surely, I don't have the answers, but what I can tell you is that whoever was behind the planning of the current traffic system in this city, thought it was all figured out. You can't tell me someone would propose a new grid to a board of officials and say, 'well, based on my calculations, this expressway from Northbrook to Chicago will be bumper to bumper and crawling more than twice a day, assuming the number of cars on the road increases at its current rate, traffic coming from the on and off ramps will cause a mild form of hysteria, and any hint of additional construction will bring the whole thing to a screeching halt.' APPROVED! No, sorry. You can't propose something that you know will fail based on reasonably unlikely but still possible scenarios (unless you're Thomas Andrews), and have people agree. You have to propose something that without a doubt will succeed. That's the only way something of this magnitude would be given the green light.

So based on that theory, when these highways were designed, built, modified, and maintained, each instance was thought to be perfect, maximizing fluidity and reducing stoppages. So then, aside from increases in population, which obviously factors in, why is there so much damn traffic? Because, like I've vented recently, people don't know how to drive, don't pay attention, don't care, and ultimately exploit a system that would most likely succeed without questionable drivers.

Now let's go to a work example. Part of my job includes designing online training. Employees or customers register online for a course, then must log in to our system to find their learning path. Any course they registered for should be in there, you go through the course or courses, complete the requirements, and you get credit. It seems so unbelievably simple, and for the high majority of people reading this, I'm sure it would be easy for you to complete the process. Yet my team here has been reduced to creating every single 'safety valve' so people don't screw it up. We tried putting the instructions on how to properly exit the course as the last slide, but no one ever read it. We made it a window that pops up before the training even starts, people either forget it or close it without reading. We can't make adjustments or advancements to new training ideas because we always have to consider how the functionality will appear to people that can't pay attention long enough to figure out how to complete a training. We get calls about people not receiving credit, and when we ask if they viewed all of the slides, they'll say no. We have devised a program and a process that should be clear as crystal to a 4th grader, but functioning adults in the world can't comprehend the simple instructions that we beat over their heads.

The point of this was not to throw all of my fellow employees under the bus, as I'm sure a few of my coworkers will read this, but it's to point out that no matter how we set this system up, as perfect as it was constructed, there are still people that poke holes in the blueprint and ruin your structure.

The best laid schemes of mice and men - often don't consider the human element. We are an amazing species. We have the ability to destroy that which was built for us, to abuse that which is there to make our lives better, to ignore that which can make our lives simpler, and selfishly trounce through life without considering the consequences of our careless actions.

I know, that was a reach, a broad slap in the face, and probably off topic enough where it deserves its own post, but I don't always stay on topic. I shouldn't generalize, so I won't. There are people out there that are like water in a broken surface, they will always find the cracks. And once one does, the rest will follow, until the crack is a hole, and the surface shatters, requiring repair to once again be functional. There is no plan for the human element besides planning to adapt and repair.