These are easy victories. All they require is an awareness of the problem and a small measure of planning. Yet in my interviews, I found that it was difficult for most people to think of their own examples. (This is not my way of bragging, by the way: Remember, I shuffled power cords for years—and what finally sparked action was, um, writing a book on upstream thinking.) Which raises the question: If upstream thinking is so simple—and so effective in eliminating recurring problems—why is it so rare?
