by Alan Weiss, Ph.D., from Alan Weiss’s Monday Morning Memo©
Reprinted with permission. Featured Image from Bentley Quarterly Magazine used with permission.

We returned from Nantucket Friday evening. We departed on August 8. Four days prior to that, the governor of Massachusetts dropped a bombshell and informed everyone from Rhode Island that we’d need proof of a negative Covid test within 72 hours of arrival or a self-quarantine would be required for 14 days (our entire stay).

Although the house we rent is on the beach and amenable to quarantine, who wants to refrain from great food and shopping and sightseeing?

We rushed to get tested.

I made an appointment for a test to have results in 3-4 days, thought the story was that a week was more likely. My wife found a place with 15-minute results, so we both went there. I signed up at 8 am with hundreds of others and was finally tested at 5 pm. Thank goodness they call your cell and I live only ten minutes away. My other test arrived in just two days, so now I had twice the proof! We completed the Massachusetts travel documents online, as though getting a visa for Yemen, printed them out, and headed for the ferry.

The Massachusetts border is 30 minutes away on the highway, and no one was there. We arrived at the ferry dock in Hyannis, and no one was “checking papers” (I thought about Germany in the 30s and 40s.). We disembarked in Nantucket—no checking. At our vacation home, with our Rhode Island license plates, and driving around town and the island, no checking, even though we saw police cars a few times.

During the entire time, we were never checked. We were happy to comply with the governor’s orders, despite the time and effort involved, for the good of public safety. But shouldn’t there be some “teeth” in this if such quarantine is vital to preventing virus spread? From a casual reading of the news daily, there are a lot of people flouting the law at will, so I don’t think we can expect high voluntary compliance with self-quarantine without some semblance of enforcement.

I’m happy we did what we had to do, what we were requested to do, responsibly. But I’m not happy that it’s apparently more talk than action. One thing I’ve learned in my career is this: Disrespect or unpunished disregard for one law creates disrespect and disregard for all laws as the occasion merits.  Perseverating warnings simply are not equal to unequivocal enforcement.

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I have been subscribing to and reading Alan Weiss’s Monday Morning Memo© for more years than I can remember on my entrepreneurial journey. His writing style, humor, and no-nonsense approach to life on life’s terms as an entrepreneur have helped me to know that I bring value to most every equation.

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About Alan Weiss, Ph.D.

His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on the boards of directors of the Trinity Repertory Company, a Tony-Award-winning New England regional theater, Festival Ballet, and chaired the Newport International Film Festival.

His speaking typically includes 20 keynotes a year at major conferences, and he has been a visiting faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, Boston College, Tufts, St. John’s, the University of Illinois, the Institute of Management Studies, and the University of Georgia Graduate School of Business. He has held an appointment as adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Rhode Island where he taught courses on advanced management and consulting skills to MBA and PhD candidates. He once held the record for selling out the highest priced workshop (on entrepreneurialism) in the then-21-year history of New York City’s Learning Annex. His Ph.D. is in psychology. He has served on the Board of Governors of Harvard University’s Center for Mental Health and the Media.

He is an inductee into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame® and the concurrent recipient of the National Speakers Association Council of Peers Award of Excellence, representing the top 1% of professional speakers in the world. He has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants, one of only two people in history holding both those designations.

His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 25th year and fifth edition. His newest is Threescore and More: Applying the Assets of Maturity, Wisdom, and Experience for Personal and Professional Success (Routledge, 2018). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.

He is interviewed and quoted frequently in the media. His career has taken him to 60 countries and 49 states. (He is afraid to go to North Dakota.) Success Magazine cited him in an editorial devoted to his work as “a worldwide expert in executive education.“ The New York Post called him “one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in America.“ He is the winner of the prestigious Axiem Award for Excellence in Audio Presentation.

He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Press Institute, the first-ever for a non-journalist, and one of only seven awarded in the 65-year history of the association. He holds an annual Thought Leadership Conference which draws world famous experts as speakers. In 2014 his featured speaker was political pundit, best-selling author, and media favorite James Carville, in 2015 Master of Influence Robert Cialdini, and in 2016 Dan Gilbert of Harvard who has over 15 million views of his TED talk on happiness.

He has coached former candidates for Miss Rhode Island/Miss America in interviewing skills. He once appeared on the popular American TV game show Jeopardy, where he lost badly in the first round to a dancing waiter from Iowa.

Alan is married to the lovely Maria for 47 years, and they have two children and twin granddaughters. They reside in East Greenwich, RI with their dogs, Buddy Beagle and Bentley, a white German Shepherd.