What went wrong with the Hubble Space Telescope (and what managers can learn from it)
- 29 March, 2012 14:35
- Comments 8
Charles 'Charlie' Pellerin.
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Pellerin says it's because people make a fundamental error when addressing questions of failure and leadership: "That this stuff is about individual abilities."
As with Challenger and Hubble, they were good technical people at KAL. "They kept testing the pilots… they're as good as pilots any place." Finally Boeing subsidiary Alteon put observers in the cockpits of KAL jets to find out what was happening. What they discovered, Pellerin says, was that the social context in which pilots were operating was having an impact on safety.
"There's only two people sitting there [in the cockpit]. The captain starts to make small mistakes and [because of the airline's internal hierarchy] the first officer is embarrassed to correct him, so he doesn't say anything cause it's considered impolite. Most of the time it doesn't matter. But as this goes on and on, the first officers just want to tune out. So they're reading magazines while the plane's flying and the captain is all by himself screwing things up. And you know, modern jets are designed to be flown by two people working as a team… so they figured out the problem fixed it and the safety record immediately went back to international standards."
This question of the emphasis on individual abilities versus the context in which individuals and teams operate is something that has consumed Pellerin's energies in his time since leaving NASA, and is the foundation of the training system used by the company he founded, 4-D Systems.
"There's a bunch of research I've come across in this work, where people say that the social context is a 78-80 per cent determinant of performance; individual abilities are 10 per cent. So why do we make this mistake? Because we spend all of these years in higher education being trained that it's about individual abilities."
Thanks to happenstance (three CEOS of Fortune 500 companies heard a talk by one of his students), Pellerin ended up converting the course he was teaching into a leadership workshop for corporations.
His starting point, he says, was Vaughan's assertions that the destruction of Challenger was a product of "invisible forces and therefore unmeasurable and therefore unmanageable". Unmeasurable and unmanageable didn't sit well with Pellerin. He studied the question, and, he says, "a voice comes to my head from undergraduate days that said the right coordinate system can turn an impossible problem into two really hard problems." He devised a matrix system used in 4-D training that he says looks at the kind of behaviours and needs that can help strengthen teams. "If I meet people's needs, we're going to be improving performance," he says. The needs include things like "Mutual respect, enjoyable work", "Authentic, aligned, efficient action" while behaviours cover such points as "Express authentic appreciation" and "Appropriately include others".
His training focuses on questions of the social context in which a team operates, rather than just looking at a team as a group of atomised individuals. In a twist, Pellerin found himself working for NASA again on a contract to deliver his training.
"I went and met one day with the guy who worries about team development and risk management at NASA and I showed him what I got… So they give me a small contract and I use all the money up. They give me a contract that I thought would be big enough for my whole life. This thing gets so popular in NASA of all places! Technical people don't usually gravitate to this kind of thing. If you want to really scare a technical person, put deep fear into them, just say something 'touchy feely' and watch while they run.
"So what I've done is I've taken social constructs and I've described them in metaphors that they understand through technical analogies. So how do I get them to understand the social forces? I tell them about Challenger. I talk about Hubble."
Rohan Pearce is the editor of Techworld Australia. Contact him at rohan_pearce at idg.com.au.
Follow Rohan on Twitter: @rohan_p
Follow Techworld Australia on Twitter: @techworld_au
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Comments
ARaybould
1
NASA made essentially the same mistake 17 years after the Challenger crash, on Columbia's last flight: the same refusal to properly evaluate well-founded technical concerns, in order to press on with the mission plan.
George Margolin
2
Rohan's article on Pellerin of NASA -- was a MARVELOUS treatise on the hows and whys of complex (ASTRONOMICALLY) product developments. But even smaller ones MUST be looked at in the same way. MisTEAKS can and do happen. But Never by ME, of coarse.
I'll look up other writings of Mr. Rohan. He does good stuff.
FYI --- I'm an ooooooooooold professional inventor with 26 and growing, patents.
George Margolin
INVENTOR@POBOX.COM
Ari
3
Unsaid is Perkin Elmer was the premier telescopes-in-space company yet they were not permitted to use those national defense resources for this program (even as just auditors) that could have done this correctly (in their sleep "Oh, another mirror? What is this our NNth?"). Somewhat due to Congressional ethics rules enforced by IGs that required companies spend a dollar lest a nickel be wasted, or per some academic lawyer's view, inappropriately used.
This wasn't (just) the Challenger with its cascading judgment failures. It was a failure to use the "A team" save for the building they once lived in.
A tragedy of the first order - those things we do to ourselves wittingly. Hopefully a lot of the spittle blew back. Pity Senator DeConcini wasn't there to get his share given the damage he did to these programs (and their people who most often served in silence).
JBD
4
This fits the cockpit crew's lack of proper communications and team work that lead to AF447 finding its way to the bottom of the Atlantic. The crew was not a team. It was a rigid hierarchy.
{^_^}
John Hutchinson
5
Empowerment in the workplace brings about improved morale. Being able to correct without fear of reprisal is good for self esteem and job satisfaction.
The best places for service are the ones were any person behind the counter can make a decision on the boss' behalf without having to go "and get authority" (with some limits obviously) and know that they will be supported.
I would love to hear Pellerin's seminars, I'm sure they are eye opening.
gnome
6
A copy of this report should go to every federal politician - with instructions to read it.
Particularly the ones who like to pretend they are experts on national communications networks and a few other things.
: )
Jim
7
I STRONGLY suggest everyone read Phil Tompkins’ book on NASA from 1958 to 2003 — a former professor of mine who literally created the field of Organizational Communication, and for Von Braun, CREATED the hierarchy at NASA and the vendor relationships (and leader/power structure) that achieved the objectives of the 1960s, but whose lessons were completely lost by Challenger, the above article and of course, Columbia.
I was so fortunate to be a student of his 30 years ago.
—
Tompkins —> http://tinyurl.com/796nghc
* 1967: when Tompkins first served as a Summer Faculty Consultant in Organizational Communication to legendary rocket scientist Wernher von Braun during the Apollo Program.
* 1968: when he served in the same capacity to help reorganize NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
* 1986: when he investigated the communication failures that caused the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
* 1987: when he researched NASA’s highly successful Aviation Safety Reporting System.
* 2003: when he interpreted the communication failures leading up to the catastrophic failure of the space shuttle Columbia.
Leader Syndrome
8
As a conclusion for managers:
1) "Go slow to go fast". Cost of change drastically increases overtime. It is thus key to involve in a cross-functional approach project stakeholders at the very early stage of the project in order to go through an open and honest risk exercise.
2) create a culture of feedback and openness that will support a constructive sharing, starting from the top hierachy