One of the biggest discussions online in Singapore in the past week has been how 45K certificates presented to volunteers and participants of the recently concluded YOG were misprinted. Instead of carrying the signatures of the President of the IOC and the Chairman of the Organizing Committee, they were printed with placeholder signatures. For those who may have missed it, this is the article from Singapore’s mainstream newspaper http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20100923-238795.html
For a nation that prides itself on efficiency, this is a big slap in the face. How does an organization (YOG Secretariat) that is derived from the civil service, adopts most if not all of the same checks and balances, make such a juvenile error? It is likely that each document, poster, etc….needs a large number of signatures before being finally allowed out. From the junior level staff who creates the document all the way to the Director, everyone puts his/her signature to “confirm” that it has been checked and verified.
In spite of all these checks, this mistake was able to pass all the way to the printers who executed the job. How, one asks oneself, can everyone checking the document miss this important and glaring error. Therein lies the crux of the problem. Because of the large number of people verifying and signing, it is sometimes human nature to believe the folks signing before have checked….and for you to rubberstamp the document before passing it up the chain.
If this is the thought process of everyone approving the document after the originator, then we have to examine the mindset of the person who created the document. We have to bear in mind that following the Games, the entire YOG Secretariat was dissolved and each executive staff who are all on contract, would have to look for new jobs. So the element of motivation to do a good job is already compromise. Adding to the fact that he/she knows that there are people approving (and hence assumed to be checking) above, it is almost a certainty that mistakes will be made.
So here we have the paradox of accountability. The larger the number of people who need to approve a piece of work….the higher the chances of errors. Couple that with the lack of punishments for mistakes and we have a situation where the whole checking and accountability mechanism is rendered ineffective….and has just cost a few thousand dollars for an easily avoidable mistake.
