All marketers and leaders: read this article from the New Your Times entitled U.S. Inaction Lets Look-Alike Tubes Kill Patients. The whole article is horrifying. In short, to make this posting make sense without reading it, all tubing in a hospital fits into one another. This means you can put oxygen into a saline drip tube and kill the person. It means you can put a food line into the blood and kill people. The article indicts the FDA for allowing this to happen.
But as a marketer or leader I want you to look at this differently. Its easy to blame the government “they didn’t make me do it”.
Where is the leadership and marketing savvy to look at this situation and not “do what the others do” and instead introduce into the market the right way of doing tubing? Pay some major hospital with a big name to work with it, choose some vital function like medicine delivery, and make those tubes not compatible with the other tubes.
Track how much safer that hospital is, because it will be, and then use the results to guilt everyone else into doing it.
Don’t be the truly embarasing company noted in the article that introduced into the market a machine just like the one that killed people…because they could. Yes the government is a mess and they allowed the introduction. But why would you? What messed up thinking process says “this machine is terminally flawed and likely kills people but we’ll get it approved so let’s launch it anyway”.
Think this doesn’t impact you if you’re not in the medical field?
Wrong.
Let’s take Daytime Running Lights. As I understand it, this is a $3 part you can add to vehicles to make them easier to see during the day, particularly days with poor visibility. The US used to require them, now does not. Canada has for many years, and has the data to prove that their inclusion saves lives. – NOTE 8/22/10 6:20pm Brian thanks for the heads up, here is his further investigation: quick thoughts on DRLs… I LOVE them, but they have never been mandated in the US. GM, realizing the Canadian laws, petitioned and was grant permission to include them. In 2001, recognizing some problems, they petitioned again to reduce intensity (glare), after public comment, the petition was withdrawn – Ann comment – so it was a marginal example, I should have investigated further!
What ever happened to the idea that car companies should look out for the driver? That taking car of the health and well-being of the driver and passengers as well as people in the street and other drivers was in fact part of the accountability of the company. Why are cars still being produced without them? So what if the government doesn’t require it – do it because its right.
When you go to sleep at night, all you leaders and marketers, do you want to know that you in your professional role have done everything within your knowledge to keep the people who use or interact with your product safe, or do you want tell your shareowners you cut corners and people will likely die but its an acceptable risk?
Too many people are answering acceptable risk.
A shout out to Jan, who turned me on to this topic.
