I was watching an interview on Fox with Kristi Noem, the DHS Secretary. She was telling Fox that DHS is making some changes in airport security, and one of those changes is that passengers will no longer be required to remove their shoes as part of the screening.
Fox asked her (and I'm paraphrasing here), but she said that she asked why removing the shoes is necessary, and evidently no one in authority had had asked that question. The answer is that the tech has gotten better and that there is no real reason to have a passenger remove their shoes.
Luckily, I don't fly much. I don't have to fly much. I used to really enjoy flying pre-9/11, but the security theater after 9/11 made me more likely to schedule a colonoscopy than an airline flight.
The bigger point of the Noem interview is that no one had asked that question. In my experience, the biggest function of leadership is to ask those questions. "Why are we doing this thing?" If the answer you get is "We've always done it like that.", then you have a problem.
There may be very good reasons why an organization does certain things. Those reasons may be regulatory, or legal, or based in logic and reason. But, if the worker bees cannot articulate good reasons, then it's time to look for alternatives.
At the very least, Kristi Noem is asking the right questions.
There seems to be a lot more “asking the right questions” since January 20th this year. He, and his staff, are not perfect, but (IMHO) they’re doing a pretty darn good job. (Certainly better than Joe or Barry and quite a few with an “R” after their name.)
ReplyDeletejuvat
If memory serves, it was the shoe bomber on a Europe to USA flight that was attempting to set off a bomb up the air before he was stopped by fellow passengers. Even a small bomb that high over a large body of water would have caused enough damage to destroy the airliner.
ReplyDeleteYes. One guy had a shoe bomb one time that he failed to detonate. We don’t know what it would have done. Another had it underwear setup to do that and failed, yet they didn’t make us drop trou at the gate for that.
DeleteI've read that they are reviewing the carry on liquid limits as well.
ReplyDeleteAll federal agencies should be reviewing why they do things and make sure there is a legal basis for their actions.
Jonathan