Lessons from the Challenger Accident

Yesterday marked the 27th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle accident.  Still today many leadership programs and business schools study this awful tragedy.   We analyze it because it offers profound lessons about leadership, risk management, and decision-making.  

Let me offer three points that we should take away from this tragedy as we reflect on it today:

1.  Normalization of deviance.    Diane Vaughan wrote the seminal book on the Challenger accident in 1996.  In that book, she explained how organizations gradually come to accept more and more risk.   She described this normalization process whereby the unexpected gradually becomes the expected and then becomes the accepted.   All organizations should be wary of moving down that slippery slope.

2.   Advocacy vs. Inquiry.    Many people initially described the eve-of-the-launch teleconference as an example of groupthink.   I don't think that's correct.   Engineers from Morton Thiokol clearly were arguing against the launch.  The meeting did not lack dissent and disagreement.   The real problem was that both sides (for and against launch) were operating purely in advocacy mode.  Each side was pushing its position.  Neither side did much to truly learn from the other.   The entire group did not move into collective inquiry mode, seeking to understand the problem of O-ring erosion more deeply or the reasons for each side believing what it did.   Instead, they argued their positions with regard to the next morning's launch and became more and more entrenched and polarized.   Effective teams balance advocacy with inquiry, so as to have a more constructive dialogue and debate.

3.  Learning from our failures.   During the Columbia shuttle accident investigation, astronaut Sally Ride said, ""I think I'm hearing an echo here."  She meant that NASA had repeated many of the failures of the past.  While they had fixed the technical errors after Challenger (no more o-ring erosion), NASA executives had not fixed the leadership and cultural problems that contributed to the tragedy.  Those problems continued and contributed to the Columbia disaster many years later.  Successful organizations take a hard look at their failures, and they examine the broad range of causes for those failures...not just the technical issues.   

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The Protege Effect: Lessons for Leadership Development?

You often hear the adage, "The best way to learn something is to teach someone else... If you can teach someone about a subject, you really have to understand the material."  New research, described by Annie Murphy Paul in Time magazine, reinforces the accuracy of this nugget of wisdom.  Scholars have used a "teachable agent" - a computerized animated figure named "Betty's Brain" to examine what they call the "protege effect."   Betty's Brain behaves like a real-world student.  Children are encouraged to "tutor" Betty's Brain.  The studies find that, "Student teachers are motivated to help Betty master the material, so they study it more conscientiously. As they prepare to teach, they organize their knowledge, improving their own understanding and recall. And as they explain the information to her, they identify knots and gaps in their own thinking."  Moreover, scholars have found that, "The agent’s questions compel users to think and explain the material in different ways, and watching the agent solve problems allows users to see their knowledge put into action." 

Is there a lesson here for leadership development?  I believe so.   Leadership development professionals, professors, and consultants always struggle with how to get managers to actually change their behavior based on what they might learn in a classroom-type environment.   We might think about putting high-potentials in the role of teacher, not just the role of student.  If we put high-potentials in the role of mentoring and teaching new hires and other junior employees, then perhaps the high-potentials will learn new skills and capabilities more effectively.  Perhaps behavior will change more significantly and more quickly. 

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Teaming is a Verb!

My friend and frequent co-author Amy Edmondson has a terrific new book out titled, "Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy."  I strongly recommend the book.   Amy is one of the world's leading scholars in the area of team learning.  Here's a short excerpt from a HBS Working Knowledge feature on the book; it captures the essence  of her argument:

In these prior treatments, team is a noun. A team is an established, fixed group of people cooperating in pursuit of a common goal. But what if a team disbands almost as quickly as it was assembled? For example, what if you work in an emergency services facility where the staffing changes every shift, and the team changes completely for every case or client? What if you're a member of a temporary project team formed to solve a unique production problem? Or you're part of a group of managers with a mix of individual and shared responsibilities? How do you create synergy when you lack the advantages offered by the frequent drilling and practice sessions of static performance teams like those in sports and music?

Teaming is a verb. It is a dynamic activity, not a bounded, static entity. It is largely determined by the mindset and practices of teamwork, not by the design and structures of effective teams. Teaming is teamwork on the fly. It involves coordinating and collaborating without the benefit of stable team structures, because many operations like hospitals, power plants, and military installations require a level of staffing flexibility that makes stable team composition rare. In a growing number of organizations, the constantly shifting nature of work means that many teams disband almost as soon as they've formed. You could be working on one team right now, but in a few days, or even a few minutes, you may be on another team.

I find her argument about teaming very compelling.  Consider your own organizational context.  How many temporary, fluid team structures exist in your workplace?  To what extent is teaming a verb, rather than a noun, in your firm?  If you want to learn how to lead in that type of dynamic environment, then I recommend taking a look at Amy's book.  

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We Don't Learn More From Our Failures Than Our Successes!

Ok, I'm frustrated with the cliche, "You learn more from your failures than your successes." Why? Well, for starters, it's not entirely true! You learn most effectively when you can COMPARE AND CONTRAST SUCCESS AND FAILURE! In so doing, you develop a much more accurate understanding of cause-effect relationships. Consider the research of Schmuel Ellis and Inbar Davidi, which I described in my last book. These researchers examined after-event reviews conducted by Israeli military forces. They compared soldiers who conducted post-event reflection exercises after successful and unsuccessful navigation exercises with soldiers who only reviewed failures. The scholars found that “contemplation of successful events stimulated the learners to generate more hypotheses about their performance.” The soldiers who systematically analyzed both successes and failures developed richer mental models of cause and effect. Perhaps most importantly, these soldiers performed better on subsequent missions!

In addition to the importance of comparison and contrast, one other key psychological phenomenon makes the cliche problematic.  When we examine the causes of failure, we experience the fundamental attribution error.  When others fail, we look inside of them, and we blame their lack of knowledge, experience, and the like.  However, when we fail, we tend to look outside of ourselves. We blame "unexpected external forces" or some other cause not of our own doing.  The fundamental attribution error prevents us from learning effectively from our failures.

So, let's stop with the cliche!  We learn by comparing our successes and failures!

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Learning from Our Success and Others' Failures

Scholars KC Diwas, Bradley Staats, and Francesa Gino have conducted a new study about how we learn and improve (or fail to do so).  They examined Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery procedures.   Their research shows that individuals (cardiac surgeons in this case) learn more from their own success than the success of others.  Moreover, they learn more from others' failures than others' successes.   What explains these findings?  The scholars argue that we attribute our own success as well as others' failures to internal factors rather than external conditions.   When we succeed, we attribute it to our own effort and capabilities.  When we fail, we often blame "unexpected external factors or pressures."  On the other hand, when others fail, we tend to attribute the outcome to some deficiency on the part of that person (poor effort, planning, skills, etc.).  Finally, the study demonstrated that, "Individuals may be more open to reflect on their own failures and learn from them when they have greater experience with success." 

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Starting College: Words of Advice

Here's a column that I wrote last year.  Perhaps it may be useful to first-year students about to begin their college experience.

Inspired by Greg Mankiw's great New York Times column titled "A Course Load for the Game of Life," I decided to offer a few comments of my own for college freshmen.

1. Pick your faculty, not just your courses. Ten years from now, it won't matter much if you took "18th Century French History" or "Cognitive Psychology" in your freshmen year, but you will remember the faculty member who made a huge difference in your life. Seek out the professors who care the most, who have a passion for teaching, and who are willing to spend time outside the classroom with students. Building those relationships early in your college career, and finding good mentors, can have a huge impact.

2. Be smart about personal finance. Think carefully about how you manage your money. The habits you cultivate at 18 years of age will last a lifetime. Have a great time, but don't take on unnecessary debt and don't spend carelessly.

3. Redefine how you study. For many students, studying means reading or re-reading the textbook and their notes from class. I would encourage you to think differently about studying. As you prepare for an exam, sit down with all your class materials, and write out a detailed review of the entire course. Then, boil that review down to just 1 or 2 pages. Then, boil it down again to just a few note cards. That process of having to synthesize and integrate all your learning in writing will have much more impact than a few extra hours spent re-reading the same tired words from a textbook.

4. Seek out your own space. Don't count on studying in your dorm room. Far too much distraction exists in the dorm room. Find a spot on campus in which you are comfortable, and in which you can focus. For many, it will be a spot in the library. However, there may be other locations as well. If you do go to the library, don't sit in a high traffic area where you will constantly be approached by friends.

5. Care for your whole self - mind, body, and soul. Don't just focus on academics. Stay in physical shape, take care of your spiritual well-being, and be mindful of your stress level.

6. Read constantly about world events. You might think I'm crazy. After all, you will have tons of assigned reading in your courses. Who has time for more reading? Actually, staying abreast of current events in world affairs, business, science, and the like will be very helpful in your college career. As you read, you can and should try to make connections to what you are learning in class. By applying what you are learning in class as you read about world events, you will engage in much deeper learning. The lessons will sink in much more effectively.

7. Thank your parents. Be sure to express appreciation early and often to your parents and other family members who are supporting you throughout your college experience. Be mindful of the sacrifices that your parents are making for you. Don't dismiss the fact that it may be emotionally difficult for them to see you leave home. Surely, you should seek out and affirm your independence from your parents, but don't trample on your parents' feelings as you do so.

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Reviewing Organizational Failures: The Case of Medical Accidents

NYU professor Lucy MacPhail has earned a best paper award here at Academy of Management for her paper examining how an academic medical center conducts reviews of medical accidents. In healthcare, regulators dictate that certain types of errors must be subjected to a formal organizational review. MacPhail found that the hospital did indeed conduct systematic reviews in accordance with regulatory oversight. However, her research shows that the hospital did not review a number of incidents which had the potential to provide substantial learning opportunities. Why not? Those incidents did not fall under the regulatory rules. In other words, the focus on compliance may steer managers away from investigating failures which may yield key learning. I believe that similar experiences may exist in a number of other industries. MacPhail recommends that organizationals their own learning goals, independent of compliance concerns. Those learning goals should drive the selection of projects to review in a systematic manner.

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