TL;DR:
- I adopted another rescue dog, who ended up eating plastic shards that nearly cost her life.
- A power line exploded into fireworks on the Fourth of July.
- Stop micromanaging! Trust in your team, even when you’re skeptical of whether they’re proceeding properly.
Meet Junie, the rescue dog who costs more than $1,000 a day to have as a pet.
How does Junie connect to a fiery Fourth of July as well as valuable management principles? Read on to find out.
The Setup
Then came the Fourth of July fireworks. Not literally. Well yes, literally, there were fireworks. But the night sky was also lit with something else.
A power line on fire right behind our house.
The Storm
As much of the country celebrated the 250th birthday of America, a sudden storm ripped through our neighborhood and a power line snapped with an explosion of sparks and landed against its poll and erupted. The sky glowed blue and red even before police and fire trucks arrived.
The reason I don’t have video evidence is because, as this was causing my youngest daughter with severe anxiety to spiral, I received a call from my neighbor who was camping several hours away but whose daughter was home from college and hosting friends at what had just become the world’s most extreme bonfire party. Imagine the apocalyptic scene of a sky aglow, sirens wailing and fireworks cracking, panicked college girls knocking on doors in the pouring rain, and through it all, my daughter NOT having a breakdown, because sweet Junie was there to snuggle away her worst fears.
Don’t worry, the heroic firefighters got the fire under control, and our power was only out for five minutes.
Or did they…and was it…
Why You Shouldn’t Micromanage: Part 1
We awoke the next morning to a steady stream of smoke from the same spot, because, as it turned out, the power line was still live, and was burning the pole. No fire, just a steady widdleing away of the wood.
A quick call to the electric company and “we have deemed it not urgent since there is no flame; we expect a crew to arrive by 5:00 p.m.” Did I mention our area’s electricity monopoly was PECO?
That’s when our power went out.
Actually, that’s not quite right. First, my 15-year-old daughter’s work schedule got changed so now her boyfriend could come over. It was their one month anniversary and he brought her flowers.
Then our power went out.
About an hour later was when PECO posted that they were aware of the situation and to please stop calling them.
About an hour after that, my wife captured this footage of the pole.
Another call to PECO reached a representative who couldn’t understand why they hadn’t treated the situation with the urgency it seemed to deserve. He promised to rectify that. Senator Frank Farry paid a personal visit to our backyard, along with a fire crew in full regalia, ready to pounce as soon as the pole collapsed but unable to do anything to prevent the collapse. Finally, with a senator involved, my wife’s video making the internet rounds, and the very nice representative rectifying the lack of urgency, PECO swung into action! By that I mean about four hours later they arrived to spray the pole with something that caused a lot of smoke and then to leave again, for another two and a half hours, at which point some incredibly brave gentlemen arrived to finally fixed the power line. Our electricity was restored two hours after that, at 6:30 p.m.
Here’s Where the First Management Lesson Comes In
Sometimes, even when a department seems less than engaged, if you give them an assignment, you should trust in them accomplish it. You see, PECO workers were on strike during this time, so dispatch likely didn’t have a team available to arrive sooner. They thought they were accurately prioritizing the situation by identifying the lack of a flame as a lack of priority. When the situation changed, the representative made every effort to escalate it. What could’ve been construed as a lazy attempt at appeasement — arriving just to hose down the live wire and then leave again — was likely an effort to prevent catastrophe while they continued trying to organize a repair crew. A stopgap, if you will, until a team could arrive who, in near record-breaking heat, and perhaps crossing picket lines?, put their lives at risk so strangers could have air conditioning (and not have their backyards catch fire).
My point is:
During a worker strike and extreme heat following a massive storm on a holiday weekend, PECO got the situation resolved without any serious damage. We homeowners thought they were shirking responsibility, and kept micromanaging the situation by calling nonstop, overloading the support teams and possibly impacting their ability to field other issues. They were aware of the situation! But we kept pestering them about the situation anyway.
We should’ve trusted that, once we’d given the assignment, those assigned would get the job done.
With that in mind, crisis averted, right?
Oh wait, no. I got ahead of myself again! I skipped the part where Junie, the dog we’d adopted five days earlier, almost died.
Why You Shouldn’t Micromanage: Part 2
Okay, back to Junie, who during this unusually boring day kept us occupied by vomiting five times. Then, after we packed our refrigerated perishables to bring to my nearby in-laws, she couldn’t seem to get comfortable, constantly stretching and adjusting and seeming extremely lethargic. As the day went on, she even started wavering on her feet as if drunk.
Therefore, right around the time the power returned, my wife and I took Junie to an emergency 24 hour veterinary hospital. Nevermind that, as diligent adopters, we’d already scheduled a new patient appointment with our regular vet for Thursday.
At this emergency vet, a doctor finally sat with us to explain the situation. Her cursory ultrasound identified fluid that suggested a blockage, but she wasn’t a certified radiologist, so she recommended a more formal ultrasound. Normally they suggested an X-ray first, she explained, but the X-ray typically showed that an ultrasound was needed, so why not just skip to the ultrasound? Made sense, right? Except no radiologist was on staff because it was Sunday night of the Fourth of July weekend on America’s 250th anniversary and should we really have expected a 24/7 emergency vet to be able to deal with an emergency 24/7?
So yes to the second ultrasound, but Junie would either have to stay at the hospital overnight, or we could save $1,300 by taking her home and bringing her back in the morning and hoping no internal organs ruptured while we slept. Meanwhile, there’s me going: but you already think it’s a blockage, can we just move on to the next step of removing the blockage?
Anyway, Junie survived the night, and the following morning a second ultrasound revealed that there was something dense and hard in her stomach, but they couldn’t tell exactly what it was without — wait for it — an X-ray! For those following along, yes, we skipped the X-ray for an ultrasound that revealed we needed an X-ray.
But that’s okay, this was still good news, because it meant maybe Junie wouldn’t require surgery. Something small enough could be potentially removed by inducing vomit.
Which was exactly what they decided to do after the X-ray made them think it was a hair tie in her stomach instead of something dense and hard. A hair tie should vomit up easily!
But oh wait, the night before, they gave her anti-nausea medicine, so after two attempts at inducing, there was no vomit to show for it. Now we were left with another choice:
- Wait until around 1:00 a.m. and hope enough time had passed for the anti-nausea medicine to be out of her system and try again. However, we ran the risk of the hair tie moving to her intestines, which would likely prove fatal without surgery.
- Put her under and perform a $5,000 endoscopy where they were likely but not guaranteed to be able to remove the hair tie. This would be on top of the other several thousand dollars we were already in the hole for over a dog we’d known less than a week.
Well, of course we did the endoscopy (remember how she’d prevented my daughter’s panic attack with snuggles?), which also became a colonoscopy, because they found sharp shards of a hard plastic in her stomach as well as in her intestines.
And just like the firefighters and electrical workers, these experts of their craft got every piece of plastic out of her. She awoke hilariously groggy, and is now back to her old self, or at least what we know her to be, since again, we’ve now had her for exactly a week as I’m typing this.
Here’s Where the Second Management Lesson Comes In
I second-guessed the experts’ every step, instead of trusting their expertise. I fussed and worried and made things bigger in my mind than they ended up being. Sometimes, even when a department seems less than competent, you should assume they share your best interest, and are doing everything they can to achieve an ideal outcome. At one point, I micromanaged so much, I had the doctor on the phone, asking her unanswerable questions, when she could’ve been prepping for the procedure. There’s a possible alternative ending to this story where Junie had swallowed a hair tie and my micromanaging caused enough of a delay that the object moved from her stomach to her intestines and got tangled and either killed her or cost me $15,000 in surgical bills.
And that leads to the final business lesson of this post:
Be decisive.
Gather as much information as you can, trust in the opinions of your experts, and then act. Make a decision.
Sitting around can only hurt you. Stopgaps can only get you so far. Identify the seemingly best solution with the information you have and move move move.
Now, with the decision made, with all the turmoil behind us, with power restored and Junie bounding happily around, I dare you to tell me she’s not worth every penny.
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