Challenger

This week we spend couple days in our Human side of Technology, understanding how and why people behave certain way at the critical moments(which you could not define critical until later). The Professor tried to get us understand that making a decision involves full understanding, before drawing conclusion as you will live in the consequences. Two videos he showed us. One is Challenger -- Space Shuttle. Another one is British Steel.

The video of Challenger is to recreate the pre-launching plan, discussion, esp. when engineers identify the Orin issues, how manager/NASA took on the information. Despite of knowing the final result, if you could just pretend not knowing what will happen, watch the movie, truly is going through some frustration. Seeing engineers trying to present the case, seeing how manager spoke and word certain uncertainty. Prof. wants us to see when you deal with uncertainties, what you want your mind go through first. The video is so powerful, as we know, there are always some engineering issues when launching a new product, at what point, you will call the stop and roll off the product. How can a good engineering manager know which technical issues he can drop, which he needs immediate attention, when there are several in front of you. Since we have two Chilean air force men, two U.S. air force men(one retired already), the whole discussion, with their experience, and the video information are incredible. for me, I thought every airplane is safe, but even in Boeing, there is margin of failing probability analysis. How can you, as a manager, be responsible to make the right call? (side note, I learned that if flight suddenly has to drop down, put your oxygen mask first, as in 5-6 second you will faint, so there is no way you can help your family put on mask first, then you, I guess air attendent just does not want to announce this at the beginning of flight.) Most of all, how can we live the decision we made? esp. certain consequences! some of managers involves in Challenger are still working in the same company. The mental reminder of the decision to let shuttle launch in such cold temperature will carry them long time. I still remember in 80s when this happened,my dad had quite a few conversations with me teaching me the history and U.S. aerospace plan competing with Soviet Union. By then, it was an accident from a foreign country. But now, watching this, all of classmates could identify that our work has similar discussions/struggles like movie's scenes when they does not know how they should deal with Orin issues. Prof. said every time when he showed this video to his consulted company, the customers felt chilled by how much similar they have in their work place. What odd response! Over 20 years Challenger's launch shocked us emotionally and intellectually. Can we pretend it happen in any fields, like IT, Health care?

Another movie is British Steel. Did CEO have vision, yes, but the whole business deal of buying one plant or two or more have been quite a manipulated process. Prof. reminds me of paying attention at people's body gesture, which let me think about show. That is the only show I see online if I have time. One thing from this movie is if you go for a very important and hard meeting, remember to bring your ally along otherwise you won't get all your ideas/suggestions go through. This is over 20 years old movie, but what it presents not just represent the time of those periods, but completely typical for nowadays business. The CEO's plan was brilliant, but failed terribly. His vision was so right but too early. Now British Steel does the same plan in Europe, and totally a leading technology.