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Lewis: The lifeboat drill

Having led large teams in the tech industry, planning the operational budget is one of the most crucial and exciting times of the year. In growth times which was, thankfully, most years for me, there was usually a good increase of available funding, so the planning process was relatively easy. Every team would want more funding (of course) and propose new projects. We would debate and get as far as possible as a team and then I would make the final call.

During the first downturn, I realized that this was a horrible approach.

The heart of the problem was that we were failing to challenge the status quo. As long as existing projects were reasonably on plan, they were rarely questioned. Once a project was funded — it became untouchable. This problem was masked in good years as new critical programs could usually still get enough funding but when the growth paused it quickly became clear how much we were spending on all of the wrong things.



I ended that policy and, for a while, my team hated me — until we crushed it and went from No. 5 to No. 1 in the market in four years.

My new policy was simple. We rank everything in terms of importance. We went round and round about whether we should be thinking about the short term or the long term. My answer was both. We wound up calling it the lifeboat drill. “Imagine you are in a lifeboat,” I said, “and your mission is to survive for as long as possible. You may encounter storms, so I want you to number each box (project/program) on your boat in the order you would throw it overboard if you needed to keep your boat afloat.”

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What this simple change did was force us to spend as much time determining what to stop doing as we were spending on looking for new cool ideas. What we found was that there were often new programs that were so important that we chose to defund existing programs. It also empowered the team with the idea that, if you want to do more cool new things, then find more places to cut costs.

Our state government passed a record number of bills, 519 of which were signed by the governor, last year. On the positive side, one could argue that this shows how the legislature is working hard to address critical issues. On the negative side, almost every new bill has some form of “cost” in terms of requiring money for implementation and/or enforcement.

Even with a budget increase of 12 percent over the previous fiscal year, the state finds itself needing to cut $700 million from the budget. This need to “cut” things from the budget is disingenuous given that they actually have more money, but this is what happens when you keep piling on new programs without looking at streamlining existing programs or reducing regulation.

I have two simple suggestions for our state leaders. First, pass a law that, for every new piece of legislation, the legislature must eliminate two outdated pieces of legislation. Net net, the goal should be to address current issues while also simplifying government regulations and improving overall government efficiency. Idaho and Virginia have already taken similar actions. If new programs require funding, then others need to be reduced.

Second, increase the spending, focus, and measurement of innovation and government efficiency programs. The Colorado budget for this fiscal year is over $40 billion and yet the funding for true innovation is almost non-existent. One program, the innovation fund shows only $2.25 million in spending.

Colorado needs to adopt the lifeboat drill concept and focus as much if not more on reducing waste, outdated regulations, and failing programs. Massive amounts of new legislation should not be viewed as an achievement but as a failure to manage the need for reducing the costs to Coloradans.

Mark Lewis, a Colorado native, had a long career in technology, including serving as the CEO of several tech companies. He’s now retired and writes thriller novels. Mark and his wife, Lisa, and their two Australian Shepherds — Kismet and Cowboy, reside in Edwards.


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