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DANGER! Philip K. Howard
McKinsey Forum on Risk, Control and Performance, February 2004 The following article was written by CG Chair Philip K. Howard for McKinsey &
Company's 2004 World Economic Forum, which featured a section on "Risk, Control
and Performance." Click here to learn more about the forum.
A SURGE IN CHILDHOOD OBESITY, WHICH LEADS TO DIABETES, WAS THE TOPIC FOR A PANEL
OF health care leaders convened by Health Secretary Tommy Thompson last year.
Reversing this trend, all agreed, required reinstilling a culture of physical
fitness. Forty years ago, JFK's President's Council on Youth Fitness, with the
same goal, had installed monkey bars and other athletic equipment in playgrounds
across the country. But they've all been ripped out. Why? Someone might fall.
Playgrounds are so boring, according to some experts, that no child over the age
of 4 wants to go to them. New York City sawed off the lower limbs of trees near
playgrounds so children wouldn't be tempted to climb a tree. Even seesaws have
disappeared.
America is perhaps the most risk-conscious culture in the history of civilization.
Common ailments like headaches are often treated by doctors with batteries of
tests. Simple classroom choices -- maintaining discipline, grading papers -- are
layered with rules and procedures designed to guarantee that no one is unfairly
treated. Ordinary banter in the workplace is discouraged in mandatory, mind-numbing
"diversity workshops." Supervision of children is fraught with peril. The child
of someone I know came back from camp sunburned because, it turns out, the camp
counselors were instructed not to put on sunscreen for fear of being accused of
unwanted sexual touching. Warning labels are plastered all over the landscape.
"Caution: Contents Are Hot" is the helpful alert on billions of coffee cups. My
favorite: "Remove Baby Before Folding Stroller."
A wealthy society, like a wealthy person, is apt to err on the side of caution,
an instinct akin to trying to protect a lead in games. But what's going on here
is not the ageold tension between caution and risk. There's a third dimension
of risk that never existed, at least not in ordinary daily choices, until recent
decades -- legal risk. In any social dealings, whether selling products, managing
employees, running a classroom, or building a playground, there's a chance that
someone might be hurt or offended. And in modern America that carries with it
the risk of being sued.
Dealing with legal risk is different from dealing with other risk because, instead
of weighing the benefits and costs of a choice, it requires focusing on the lowest
common denominator. A choice might be beneficial or productive, but nonetheless
carry huge legal risk. A car might be brilliantly designed to be affordable, but
not quite as safe as one that costs twice as much. When the inevitable car wreck
happens, the manufacturer's internal risk/benefit analysis will be introduced
as the "smoking gun" that practically guarantees liability. How dare corporations
weigh the costs of improved safety against affordability? A drug might save the
lives of thousands, but cause a few to die. The learning of 29 children may be
immeasurably improved when the disruptive child is sent home, but the legal hearing
will put the teacher under a magnifying glass to justify the "fairness" to the
one disciplined.
After several decades of escalating legal risk, there has been a major shift
in our cultural perceptions of risk generally. Risk has become a suspect concept.
"You took a risk" is an accusation, reason enough to be sued. Every culture has
its foibles and inefficiencies, but losing our understanding of risk has some
dramatic implications for the functioning of society.
One effect, ironically, is that society has become much more risky. Striving
to eliminate immediate risks, we incur far greater second-level risks. There are
marginally fewer playground accidents, but childhood obesity and diabetes are
becoming an epidemic. In the name of better care, doctors squander an estimated
$100 billion in unnecessary tests, indirectly depriving millions of healthcare
that's actually needed. Warning labels have become a societal version of crying
wolf, universally ignored because they're universal. The compulsive drive to eliminate
risks, as Aaron Wildavsky explained in his 1983 essay "The Secret of Safety Lies
in Danger," only leads to a dramatic escalation of risk.
Another effect is to undermine freedom. When anything that goes wrong -- any
accident, any disagreement -- is a potential occasion for legal retribution, people
don't feel free to make sensible choices, and begin to go through the day looking
over their shoulders instead of where they want to go. Leadership -- the art of
making choices on behalf of others -- has the rug pulled out from under it. Someone
might complain? Better be careful. Like doctors ordering unnecessary tests, executives
begin practicing defensive leadership, making decisions by the book rather than
by instinct about what might work best.
The corrosive effects on the broader culture could fill a book. What has replaced
risk is not a culture of caution but a culture of blame and entitlement. An atomistic
version of individualism -- one that doesn't honor the health of common institutions
and mores -- tears at the fabric of society.
Climbing out of this rut is difficult because we no longer have the vocabulary
to discuss the inevitability of accidents and disappointment. The victim appears,
demanding satisfaction, and we shrink back in legal fear. We don't know how to
say that sometimes things go wrong, or that some people just don't get along.
This is an odd phenomenon, as if an entire culture had a car wreck, and developed
a kind of amnesia about how life works. Why, contrary to all reason and logic,
do we find ourselves lacking even the vocabulary to discuss the reality of risk?
Deep down in our cultural psyche, there is one risk, I believe, that keeps us
from climbing out -- fear of authority. Someone on behalf of society must ultimately
decide what is a reasonable risk and what is not -- are seesaws okay or not? Every
society needs red lights and green lights. Common choices have to be made. Determining
the boundaries of acceptable risk used to be the role of law. Law in turn is nothing
but a series of value judgments made by people with the job to do that. But we
don't want to run the risk of other people's judgment.
There's no idea more inimical to the modern sensibility than authority. For liberals
this manifests itself in the idea that any aggrieved person has an "individual
right" to sue over almost anything, and take the case to a jury. (Who knows what
biases lurk in the heart of the judge, or whether the judge was paid off by some
big company?) For conservatives, there's almost a political theology against judicial
and governmental authority. (Who knows what liberal nonsense may spew forth from
the bench?) Under the modern conception of the fair society, no one should have
authority to make choices unless guided by a clear rule that is demonstrably provable.
Sure, we accept the need for authority, both left and right will declare ... so
long as decisions are objective.
Judgments on risk, however, are inherently subjective. Is this risk worth taking
or not? No matter how many analyses are done, risk still requires a value judgment.
Are seesaws worth the risk or not? How do you "prove" what is a stupid lawsuit?
This objectivist conception of authority leads not to fair authority but to an
abdication of authority altogether Judges sit on their hands, and allow absurd
claims for infinite amounts of money.
There's a paradox in trying to avoid the risk of authority, as with risk in general.
Today in America, because we are unwilling to take the risk of people making common
choices, we find ourselves at risk to any selfish or angry person. Authority in
a society is a concentric phenomenon: take away the authority of judges and legislators
and principals, and pretty soon we lose ours. What good is the parent's idea if
the principal doesn't have the authority to act on it?
Everything in life involves a risk. Every choice involves a risk. Every movement
involves a risk. Doing nothing involves risk. Giving people authority to make
common choices involves the risk, indeed the inevitability, that some will do
it badly. We can guard against the risk of bad judgment in many ways -- appeals
of a judge's decision, an oversight committee at a school. But striving to eliminate
any of these risks is the greatest risk of all. Risk is just the flip side of
opportunity -- do away with risk and we lose opportunity.
Once a culture gets in spiral like this, there's only one way back -- leaders
must emerge who are willing to assert not only values of right and wrong, but
to assert the need to make common choices on behalf of all of society. This idea
of restoring authority to make social choices collides squarely with a fundamental
tenet of our culture. Sociologist Alan Wolfe has suggested there is now "an eleventh
commandment: Thou shalt not judge." But there's no other way out. We must take
the risk of leadership to cure ourselves of the cancerous consequences of a culture
without risk.
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