Sometimes the best of intentions have unintended consequences.
Afghanistan in 2003 was rugged. We made do with what we had. Outstations, like Lwara and Asadabad (A-bad), were little more than walled compounds with HESCO barriers for watchtowers and bunkers dug from the rocky ground. Our kitchen was a Mk 19 ammo can with boiling water and a pan of t-rations, our shower, a Ranger Buddy with a water jug.
In the Spring, after months of grueling patrols and water can showers, we hired the locals to plumb a shower in A-bad. It was the first time we had seen running water in the outstations–a small comfort that offered outsized benefit. You take small comforts wherever you can at war: a care package from a church halfway across the world, a letter from your wife, a photo in your pocket. These little things add up and remind you that someone out there knows you’re out here. But those small comforts can have a prickly underside–the photos remind you of who you’re missing, items in the care packages spoil in transit, and the letters hold sadness between the lines. Even the small comfort of a shower had a prickly underside.
For whatever reason, the shower in A-bad had a real problem: the string of lights in the small, dingy room and the water piping were close enough to create an arc of electricity at the shower handle. Every time you went to access the comfort of running water–after long patrols–you were met with the pain of electric shock. Every. Time. We tried buffering it with empty shampoo bottles, hopeful that the plastic would separate us from the metal, or showering with our Nomex gloves. Still, both offered minimal insulation as water ran over the barrier. It was nice to take a running shower, but the cost made us reconsider the benefit. Sometimes you just opted for the water can.
“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction. ”
Sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits.
Sometimes the benefits are worth the costs, even when they come with discomfort.
Anytime, “anything done in earnest is never done in vain,” as my good friend Blayne always reminds. The shower was a benefit attempted in earnest. Our command aimed to provide the boys with some degree of comfort along with the health benefits of sanitary living conditions during the grueling mission demands. But the benefit held a hidden cost.
Considering the upfront costs of a given benefit are valuable. I see a lot of leaders engaging in this when rolling out new projects, initiatives, or systems…like a customer relationship management (CRM) software. Weighing the likely costs is wise and eases the natural burden of adoption, especially when those asked to adopt the new approach are included in the process. But make no mistake, there will be hidden costs that emerge in execution. And while the hope is that they are not terribly shocking (pun intended), when unexpected costs do emerge during implementation, resist the urge to lament the decision and backtrack.
Afterall, the benefit remains the benefit and implementing it in earnest is never done in vain.
I recently revisited my old war journals and read a passage, “showered for the first time in 11 days today,” after a series of long patrols. Interestingly, no mention of the electric shock made it on the page. Which tells me that while it was annoying, and mildly painful, the benefit of a simple shower, in austere conditions, outweighed the cost of the shock. I’m sure my squadmates appreciated my willingness to clean up as well.
And I know I appreciated my leadership investing in the simple, yet impactful benefit.
