Three Points of Contact

Safety experts tell us that when climbing a ladder always maintain three points of contact: two hands and one foot on the ladder or one hand and two feet.  If one has less than three points of contact with the ladder they are very likely to fall. 

 The “Three Points of Contact” rule applies to more than just climbing a ladder.  Whether one is baking a pie, building a house or attempting to reduce government spending; it requires information, understanding and action.  More specifically it requires accurate and timely information, proper understanding and the correct action.  Get any one of these three wrong and your pie taste awful, or your house is unlivable or your economy goes in the tank.  While no person, group or country gets it right every time; those who get it right more often than not end up doing much better than those who mostly get it wrong. 

 And even those who get it right most of the time can lose it all with one really bad decision; the Titanic comes to mind in that regard.  In fact, the Titanic is a classic example of a disaster when those in charge get it wrong.  They had information, mostly timely and accurate except for one major piece of misinformation.  The Titanic was not unsinkable. From that point on they lacked a proper understanding of the risks and their action was to continue on course.  In the aftermath, other miscommunications and operational failures have been judged as factors in the great ship going down.  How one chooses to sort it all out, it remains that misinformation, misunderstanding and incorrect actions sunk the Titanic.  The iceberg was just being an iceberg and got in the way.

If we are honest with ourselves, we have all had those Titanic moments, some in our personal lives and some in our in our professional endeavors.  The ones we most regret are those where we actually had the correct information and understood what was at stake, but chose the incorrect action. We thought we knew better or perhaps we just wanted that "rush"...hold my beer, watch this...as I fall off the ladder.