Up Close and Personal

People love disaster stories. Maybe it is just because they like to hear the names “Jack” and “Rose” over and over again?

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Actually, I was listening to a Harvard Business Review podcast recently which offered a different insight as to why people like disaster stories: during disasters, rules, regulations, legalities, and politics make very little difference when on the spot decisions are made.

Instead, other, more immediate factors take precedence. And as Andrew O’Connell points out in the podcast, when we watch disaster movies or read books about disasters, we may well find ourselves wondering how our own carefully constructed but mostly untested moral reasoning would hold up in a catastrophic situation. Will our behavior be guided by selflessness, self-interest, or something else?

Even if we don’t know how we might react, it is clear that during disasters, immediate and crucial decisions get made at the fundamental level. The further away the decision-making process gets, the more difficult it can be to determine who really needs assistance, and what sort of assistance is needed.

There is a parallel here to how decisions are being made in Colorado’s system of funding and serving individuals with intellectual disabilities. Increasingly, decisions on how this system should be organized and services are delivered are being made by people who are far away from the individuals who need assistance. This can lead to a lack of awareness of the real issues that need to be addressed, and may result in a system designed to meet the needs of the ones making the rules and regulations instead of the end users – the people getting the services. We are running a real risk of creating a system that doesn’t really offer opportunities for our citizens with developmental disabilities to engage in the community in meaningful ways.

Now, I’m not saying that we want to make decisions regarding the future of our system (and therefore, the people we serve) using exactly the same kind of methods one would use in a disaster. But I do think we can learn something from the idea that the closer we are to the fundamental level, the level of the individual, the more likely we are to make our decisions based on “higher issues” like the needs and desires of the individuals, rather than “lower issues” like politics or convenience. If we can’t learn that lesson, we risk creating a real disaster, one that could have negative ramifications for those we serve for years to come.

Then again, what do I know?