Being disorganised: $4bn

Originally a LinkedIn post.

We have discovered the cost of being disorganised. It's about $4bn.

Victoria (a state here in Australia) famously just cancelled the Commonwealth Games due to a budget blowout of $4bn. Apparently "the budget had failed to cost security and transport, and having multiple athletes villages was also underquoted".

"It's like we've never done this before", I joked to Lucy. Of course we have done this before: as recently as 2018 in the Gold Coast, and Melbourne in 2006. Melbourne is the state capital of Victoria!

The point of having done it before is that you learned something from the experience. You spent a tremendous amount of money costing security, transport, and athlete villages. So then the next time you do it, you can use what you learned.

But we can't do that, can we? Because we're disorganised. I wonder if the organisers of Victoria 2026 even approached the Gold Coast team. Was there any point?

If you'd asked anyone for the files related to the Games five years ago, could they have given them to you?

Would what you were given have been any use at all? Or would it have been a disorganised medley of folders littered with files called Copy of copy of Transport budget for Gold Coast (001).xlsx?

Disorganisation is costing us billions of dollars a year. Most of it is hidden; this was the rare case where we see it laid bare.