They’re going to die anyway!
I saw the other day that Royal Dornoch Golf Club has installed defibrillators and first aid kits on six of its buggies.
Five of them are hired out to golfers with pre-existing conditions; the other is for their “roving ranger”, who can help if someone has a problem.
It seems highly sensible to me, and I was delighted to learn they want to go further and get them into all buggies going forward.
But it did remind me of a regional GCMA meeting a few years back when the British Red Cross came in to demo some defibrillators, offer some training and provide advice on where to station the defibrillators.
Buggies weren’t suggested, which maybe reflects how tech has moved forward in the last few years, but what I found remarkable was the number of managers poo-pooing having them at all.
The Red Cross team were suggesting one in the clubhouse and perhaps one in the halfway hut, but according to plenty of the room, there would be no point:
“If they have a heart attack, they’ll be so far from the clubhouse that we wouldn’t be able to get there in time”.
Even at the halfway hut, it was a problem: “OUR halfway hut is not halfway, so still “too far” away to help anyone”.
Genuinely, the common consensus in the room seemed to be that people were going to die anyway, so we may as well not bother trying to save them.
Yep. I know.
The thing is, we can all dismiss new ideas or concepts with the same level of irrationality:
There’s “no point” in sending emails to your audience – “no one will read it”.
There’s “no point” in improving your website; “no one goes there anyway”.
A reticence to embrace the new and consider how you can evolve and improve is dangerous – and it can genuinely be the difference between your business surviving and thriving or – to put it bluntly – dying.
Just like a defibrillator…
