By now, the whole world has seen the horrifying, gasp-inducing images of the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridg at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. The bridge was struck by the 985-foot Dali, a Singapore-flagged vessel that lost all power as it was making its way out of the Port of Baltimore to the open seas, loaded to capacity with cargo.
I cannot get the image of that 1.6-mile bridge collapsing and falling into the Patapsco River out of my mind. We don’t see that gauge of disaster every day, after all. For perspective, the Dali is the length of three soccer pitches end to end, and it took out a bridge nine time its length.
A Tragic Loss
When all is said and done, the loss of human life, which now numbers only in the single digits, will surely rise. However, it will stay small, no comfort at all, of course, to the families of the victims.
But did you notice something? At the time of the accident, there was no vehicular traffic on the bridge, a span that had, until Tuesday, a volume of 11.3 million vehicles per year, or nearly 31,000 per day. There was no one driving on that bridge when normally there could have been upwards of a hundred vehicles – and countless more passengers – even at that time of night. In that vein, there was no loss of life or property.
Miracle? Or great leadership?
How did that happen? Was it a miracle? Or, at the very least, a coincidence? On first view, it could have been either. But truly it was neither. It was leadership – and leadership of the highest order, for that matter, as there seems to have been no one person who made the decision to clear the bridge. Indeed, a decision had been made to do so, but circumstances suggest that these decision models are made ahead of time and carried out when crises occur. For transparency, I have no first-hand contact with this story, but the way events unfolded, it bears striking resemblance to other heroic tales of crisis management, some of which are offered as prime case studies. In essence, critical scenarios are imagined, appropriate leadership actions are designed, and then the whole thing gets shelved with the hope it never has to be used. But it’s there f needed.
90 Critical Seconds
Within 90 seconds – roughly the amount of time at prevailing speed limits that a typical vehicle would spend crossing the Francis Scott Key Bridge – from when the dispatcher’s warning of impending and immediate danger blared from the radio that a gigantic ship was out of control and headed for the bridge, – police officers jumped into action at both ends of the bridge, blocked off access to the bridge, and totally cleared the roadway in both directions. In 90 seconds. Three Super Bowl commercials. I am not certain how physically close to danger those heroes were, but it’s a safe bet this was no typical day at the office.
Making Critical Decisions
A crisp decision like this one was no accident or even spur-of-the-moment good fortune. It’s the result of good leadership already in place plus on-the-spot assessment plus responsibility. Napoleon Bonaparte had an expression for it: coup l’oeil de genie, the quick glance of genius.
Leadership Without A Leader
When leadership vision sees things in advance – not necessarily specific, but in general likelihoods and scenarios – and the right people are in place and empowered to carry out the right actions at the right times for the right reasons – then we may not be able to see the one leader.
But we do see that leader’s leadership.