I don't know why but I just feel like writing something about this topic today.This term is initially coined when government incurs civilian casualties in their cause of action - usually like in war or anti-terrorism actions, say for example if the US government tries to take out a Iraqi warlord by firing a missle into his apartment but the missle took out a not just the target but also his neighbours which includes children and old folks - then these neighbours are considered collateral damage.In another word, collateral damages are the unintended victims which resulted as a by-product of a certain action.Of course these days the terms covers not just government or war action, it's widen to include even personal matters.Take this example - a Vice-President of a big company has a personal grudge against one of his manager, instead of sorting this personal difference with this manager he schemed to get him fired by finding fault with his work. One day this VP finally get his long waited opportunity, a major project handled by this manager has a major problem which could cost the company millions of losses if not detected early and rectify.However, since the VP has a personal vendetta he kept quiet and did not help to rectify the mistake which him alone spotted.When it all come crashing down, the company lost the project and made tens of millions of losses, ten fold more than the VP estimated, because not only they lost the income from the project, the client had sued the company for neglience and breach of contract and the company was ordered by the court to pay many times the project worth to compensate the client. Due to this major failure, the CEO not only fired the manager in charge of the project, he shutdown the whole project team including that VP in-charge of that division.So the collateral damage here in this case is not just the other innocent colleagues in that division but even the VP who is the initiator got burnt by his own action.Morale of the story, before you push that button to hurt someone you think you are targeting, THINK THRICE if you are going to incur collateral damages - or worse, can the collateral damage includes yourself.
Food for thought for year 2009.
~ = Dedicated to the one = ~ |
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