The Reflecting Pool in Washington recently turned green.

Most of the coverage focused on the algae, the treatment, and the cleanup effort. What caught my attention was something else.

I wasn’t surprised by the green water. I’ve owned multiple pools and lived with potable water issues on ships throughout my Navy career. Water chemistry can be perfect until it isn’t, and when conditions change, the effects can appear almost overnight.

By the time the water turned green, I had already been following the story for weeks. The outcome seemed almost predictable.

The project appeared to begin with a desired outcome rather than an evaluation of alternatives. Traditional procurement processes were shortened or bypassed. Expertise from one environment was assumed to transfer seamlessly into another. The decision process became increasingly top-down.

At several points, I found myself thinking, “This feels like an ‘I know a guy’ solution.”

The “I Know a Guy” Trap

In fairness, most of us have relied on exactly that approach at some point in our careers. Defense is a relatively small community. We cross paths with the same people repeatedly over decades of service, industry, and government assignments. Trusted relationships matter, and often for good reason. A recommendation from someone you respect can save time and reduce risk.

The danger emerges when familiarity replaces evaluation.

When leaders are unsure how to assess expertise in a particular field, social proof often fills the gap. We trust the recommendation because we trust the person making it. The question quietly shifts from “Who is best suited to solve this problem?” to “Who do we already know?”

Sometimes those are the same person.

Sometimes they aren’t.

The larger and more consequential the challenge becomes, the more important that distinction can be.

None of these observations guaranteed failure. Together, however, they created conditions where failure became increasingly likely. What fascinated me was how familiar the pattern felt.

I’ve watched versions of this story unfold inside companies for years. A leader decides where the organization needs to go. Someone proposes a shortcut. A trusted advisor reinforces the decision. Dissent becomes uncomfortable and questions become inconveniences. Before long, the organization is no longer asking whether the plan is correct. It’s asking how to make the plan succeed.

That’s often the moment the chemistry begins to change.

When Scale Changes Everything

One of the details that caught my attention after the fact was the image of crews treating a 6.75-million-gallon body of water with gallon-sized containers. Whether hydrogen peroxide was technically appropriate isn’t really the point. The image itself was striking.

It reminded me of a homeowner trying to rescue a backyard pool.

The problem, of course, is scale.

A typical backyard pool may hold twenty thousand gallons of water. The Reflecting Pool holds millions. Solutions that seem perfectly reasonable in one environment can become laughably inadequate in another.

Business leaders make the same mistake all the time.

Companies pursue contracts worth millions of dollars and then agonize over investments representing a tiny fraction of the opportunity. They spend years developing products, hiring talent, and raising capital, only to hesitate when it comes time to invest in expertise, positioning, stakeholder engagement, or strategic guidance.

They are comfortable risking the opportunity; they are uncomfortable writing the check.

The decision feels prudent because the cost is visible; the opportunity cost isn’t.

What looked absurd to me about the Reflecting Pool wasn’t the gallon jug.

It was the belief that the scale of the solution
matched the scale of the problem.

The Symptom Is Rarely The Problem

Since the algae story first made headlines, reports have emerged that portions of the paint job itself are now peeling away from the basin.

The green water was attention-grabbing.
The structural failure is far more consequential.

That’s often how organizational failures unfold. Leaders spend months reacting to visible symptoms while overlooking the underlying conditions that created them. By the time everyone can see the problem, the chemistry has usually been changing for a very long time.

The algae wasn’t the failure. It was the warning light. The chemistry had already changed. Most organizational failures work exactly the same way.

The symptom is rarely the problem.

What Am I Reading?

This week I finished The Unexpected Spy by Tracy Walder. Walder’s career path was anything but conventional. Fresh out of college, she found herself working first at the CIA and later at the FBI, including time assigned to a special project office just steps from CIA Director George Tenet’s suite during the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

The book provides an insider’s perspective on one of the most consequential periods in modern American history. While Walder was navigating intelligence operations inside Washington, I was serving in the J-3 Operations Directorate of the Joint Staff—the heartbeat of the nation’s military response following the attacks. Later, I would command two ships during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her account offered a different window into many of the same events.

Walder also writes candidly about her experiences as a woman working inside both organizations. Her descriptions of sexism and institutional resistance within the FBI are striking and often frustrating.

What I found most valuable was the opportunity to see the post-9/11 period through a different lens. History often gets told from the perspective of senior leaders. Walder’s story captures what it felt like to be a relatively junior participant inside institutions grappling with uncertainty, urgency, and rapidly changing missions.

For readers interested in intelligence, national security, or the human side of major historical events, it’s a worthwhile addition to the reading list.