You’ll get riled up if you don’t know…
Here are two headlines from my morning news to rile you up:
👿‘Andheri bridge closed down, again’
A bridge collapses in Mumbai in 2018. Four years later, the reconstructed bridge is deemed unsafe by a consultancy firm. A failed project, millions of taxpayer money lost, citizens are aghast!
👿‘Finally, COP27 puts climate compensation on agenda’
For the first time ever at a premier global climate summit, compensating poor nations for climate disasters has been tabled for discussion. Experts dub this a key first step in the long road ahead to climate compensation. What? you ask, racking your brains. Turns out for years the topic was discussed only as a side track outside the summit.
👉The Buxton Index of an entity is defined as the time horizon (in years) over which the entity makes its plans. It signals the pace at which decisions are made.
💡Collaboration between entities with very different Buxton Indices, like governments and climate activists, will almost always* fail and devolve into finger-pointing. The government will say activists do not understand the complexity of the problem; the activists will accuse the government of lacking will.
If you think Buxton Index is limited to governments and civic bodies, you’re mistaken. It happens to you all the time. You just didn’t have a name for it.
😨That failed campaign that ate up a month of runway? That product that took six months to sunset? Or that super critical pet project of yours that has been tabled for two quarters ahead? Buxton Index tells their stories too well.
Now that you know, list down the Buxton Indices of different departments/teams in your organization and the projects they’re working on with each other. Now you’ve a superpower. You can predict trouble!🔮
*COVID is a good recent example of an instance when Buxton Index was thrown out the window. True, but before you start making it the rule, remember that all hands on deck for COVID meant no/few hands for anything else.
