Close Call Leadership

A United passenger jet came within 300 feet of a colliding with a cargo plane on Sunday in Chicago, prompting yet another O'Hare airport investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). It's the fifth such near-miss at O'Hare in 2006.


Now one close call - let alone a full handful of them - is too many, but I have to say that I'm really impressed that the NTSB is investigating even though no one was actually hurt by the mishap.

In business, near-misses are often seen as irrelevant. No harm, no foul, you might say. It's a pretty strong Leadership Move, though, to take a closer look at what went wrong ... even if nothing untoward happened as a result of the wrongness.

In leadership, the ends do not always justify the means; sometimes the getting somewhere is more important than the destination.

Take a look around your workplace. What close calls might deserve a second look-see? Not overlooking them might help you prevent a deadly crisis.

The NTSB knows that to be true ... literally true.