Last Thursday, MoDOT went a long way toward calming angry drivers who were stuck in hours of traffic because of a mere half-inch of snow. Past storms have dropped much more snow on St. Louis and didn’t cause nearly as many problems. What went wrong this time? MoDOT’s Director Kevin Keith told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “We didn’t do a very good job and my reaction to that is I’m disappointed. I want to apologize to the people of St. Louis and those in that part of Missouri for our efforts. You should expect more from us, and you’ll get it.”

Did Keith need to go that far in his apology? I would say no, but the fact that he did speaks volumes about Keith as a leader and about the entire MoDOT organization. When it comes down to it, MoDOT guessed wrong based on the forecast, and they accepted full responsibility for that guess. When is the last time you saw someone accept full responsibility for something that was out of their control? If Keith and his team had guessed the other way, treated the roads with solution and salt, and the forecast had been wrong, they could have been criticized for wasting taxpayer dollars. From a media and crisis communications perspective, Keith did everything right. He accepted responsibility and vowed to do better in the future. Now, let’s cut MoDOT some slack and see how they do with the next snow storm this winter.

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