Judgment Calls. Thomas H. Davenport

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СКАЧАТЬ delay, and eventually approve the launch contributed to NASA's good judgment. Overriding all was the design of an FRR problem-solving process, which brought together so many and varied experts and interested parties in one room and also through a series of well-orchestrated offline working sessions. Discussions were artfully facilitated so stakeholders could listen to one another and discuss their findings and opinions in a “truth first, hierarchy later” kind of way. Widespread, “democratic” polling (rather than, say, providing information to a few senior managers who would make the decision themselves) was another hallmark of the process. The FRR designed into the process the presence and influence of multiple viewpoints and sets of expertise—an important component of judgment, and one that study after study has shown to be critical to successful decision making.⁵

      The extent and quality of testing and research, including having separate groups take different approaches to the same problem, were also important. The scientific culture of NASA, and its commitment to having the best possible factual information, was another critical aspect.

      Understanding the importance and potential consequences of a decision—in this case, seeing the astronauts whose lives depend on the shuttle technology and, at the same time, understanding the legitimate need to fly as soon as it is possible to do so safely—was a living example of another invaluable dimension of building judgment into this process: tightly linking the stakes of the decision to the accountability for what would be decided.

      The leader's approach and style in managing this entire process was also fundamental.⁶ Decision-making processes are often subverted by a leader who pays lip service to consultation, going through the motions of openness while pushing the group toward the choice he's already made. Similarly, some attempts to create a decision-making process fail because they go to the opposite extreme—encouraging endless discussion and lowest-common-denominator consensus building.

      NASA colleagues praised Gerstenmaier's openness to discussion and debate while still keeping his eye on the need to find the best possible answer in the context of project constraints. Several of the participants in the FRRs commented generally on how NASA's culture has been changed, learning from the tragedies that came before—away from “launch fever” and much more balanced toward safety; away from discouraging or disregarding dissent from engineers and others, but rather embracing scientific inquiry as a critical partner in final decision making.

      The earlier, fatal errors in the shuttle program happened in part because of the agency's tendency to think of space flight as routine—operational rather than experimental—when it in fact remains a risky endeavor that tests the limits of complex technology designed to control immense forces. Gerstenmaier notes that the probability of failure of a shuttle mission with no obvious technical problems is about 1 in 77—not odds that any of us would accept in commercial aviation. In “Some Safety Lessons Learned,” Bryan O'Conner writes about the importance and difficulty of fighting complacency:

      Countering complacency is arguably harder than recovering from a mishap. We have to find creative ways to counteract the common psychological tendency to assume that a string of successes means that we have somehow reached a state of engineering and operational perfection—and, therefore, immunity from failure.⁷

      Sustaining a commitment to safety—and to good judgment—requires constant, vigilant attention to both processes and culture. It also requires what writer Edmund Gosse long ago described as “higher modesty”—the recognition that, no matter how smart and knowledgeable you are, you can still be thoroughly wrong about important issues.⁸

      Reflections on Organizational Judgment in NASA STS-119

      In a recent study, Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe analyzed what they called “high-reliability organizations”—and what they do to perform consistently at a high level of quality control.⁹ The mind-set and processes of organizations like hostage negotiation teams, emergency medical teams, nuclear power facilities, and firefighters are integrated and designed to perform better than many organizations; they have to be, because their price for failure is high. A major barrier they constantly fight to overcome is complacency and arrogance. Weick and Sutcliffe note five attributes of these organizations, all of which we can identify in this NASA case: commitment to tracking small failures, the ability to recognize and understand complex issues, real attention to frontline (operational) workers, the ability to learn from and rebound from errors, and the ability to improvise effective response to crisis.

      A major part of NASA's ability to do all those things was its problem-solving process, as seen in this case. It both followed a clear and logical analytical approach, in appropriate sequence, and also counterbalanced the sequence by flexibility for change as needed. The overarching culture was one of open exchange, honoring of diverse opinions, and the embrace of the right to dissent. Today we admire NASA not just for its successes but for its ability to rebound from the horrible tragedies of Challenger and Columbia. If ever there has been a resilient and high-reliability organization, it is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—and the judgment it has built is clearly a very important part of what it is.

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      WGB Homes

      How Can We Sell This House?

      GREG BURRILL IS the owner and founder of WGB Homes. WGB has built over 1,800 homes in the western and southern suburbs of Boston. Boston is known for its “Route 128” technology corridor, but in fact most of the technology activity in recent years has taken place near Interstate 495, the “outer loop” that when originally built, ran through farms, fields, and small towns. Now it's the home of EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Staples, and other large employers, and Greg Burrill has built a lot of homes for their executives and employees. The area—alternatively known as MetroWest or the Blackstone Valley—also has good access to downtown Boston via the Massachusetts Turnpike and commuter rail service. It's been the primary growth area for residential real estate in Boston over the last twenty or thirty years, since there was plenty of both open space and jobs in the area.¹

      Burrill's been in business for thirty-nine years—through good times and bad for home builders—so he must be doing something right. He's conservative in his approach to his business, never going into deep debt like many home builders. “You have to have low loan-to-value ratios, and you have to have cash,” he notes. He also simply slows the pace of development and construction down when times are tough. They've certainly been tough over the last several years; Burrill doesn't remember a period of decline in residential real estate that lasted this long.

      WGB Homes is primarily a family business. Greg Burrill's brother Steve is its vice president. His two daughters, Erica and Vanessa, both work for the company, as does one son-in-law. In a newspaper article about the company, a buyer of one of their homes described them as “nice, honest, fair people.”² The company's pattern is to build one development project at a time—enough to keep all members of the family and company busy, but not anything that will bankrupt the company in a residential construction turndown. They do it all—buy the raw land, develop the land, build houses, and market them. They will occasionally even resell a house in one of their neighborhoods if approached by the owner.

      WGB's current development project is called Brookmeadow Village. It's in the semirural town of South Grafton. Grafton was one of the Massachusetts towns known for “praying Indians”; the Pilgrim missionary John Eliot established a church and school for the Nipmuck tribe there in 1671. It was later known briefly for woolen manufacturing. Today it's mostly an exurb for young families who can't afford the high housing prices nearer Boston. It's still not cheap, however; new houses in Brookmeadow Village average just over half a million dollars.

      Brookmeadow Village is a ninety-one-lot neighborhood. Burrill prides himself on building neighborhoods, СКАЧАТЬ