Picture this scene.
You are sitting in front of your television on a cold morning to witness the launch of your country’s proudest moment of what would be the first flight which will carry a civilian into space. You watch 7 wonderful , talented human beings who are waving their goodbye and crowds all around cheering for their success. Just 73 seconds after takeoff, at an altitude of about 46,000 feet, the shuttle is engulfed in a cloud of fire. You watch in terror as the orbiter is torn apart, falling out of the sky into the Atlantic Ocean below, killing all seven astronauts on board.
I was watching the Netflix documentary of the Challenger disaster this weekend and was moved. Do give it a watch if you have the time. As I was reflecting on this documentary, I was able to do some research to understand more about the history and context behind the disaster.
The lessons taught by the decisions leading up to the Challenger disaster and how the aftermath of the disaster unfolded are equally important and as product managers , there is a lot we can learn from this –
a. Speak up and Listen to the team
The reason for Challenger disaster is first and foremost a story of mismanagement and how the leadership at NASA did not listen to the data at hand from its engineers and contractors.
The engineers at Morton Thiokol – the contractor responsible for the design of the solid rocket boosters – were concerned about the effect of the cold weather on the solid rocket booster O-rings. The O-rings were designed by these engineers to operate at an ambient temperature of no less than 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
On the day of the launch, the ambient temperature was 30 degrees. Worried about the brittleness of the O-rings, Thiokol told NASA that the launch needed to be postponed.
NASA ignored the risk of an O-ring failure and objected to the recommendation to delay the launch. The launch had already been delayed a number of times for various reasons. One NASA manager is quoted as saying, “I am appalled by your recommendation.” Another NASA manager said, “My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch – next April?”
Thiokol’s VP of Engineering R.K. Lund felt torn, hesitant to override Boisjoly’s and the other engineers’ advice. In turn, Jerald E. Mason, VP of Operations at Thiokol’s Wasatch plant, famously suggested Lund put on his “management” rather than “engineering hat.” Could Thiokol prove, without a doubt, that the forecasted cold temperature posed a high enough risk to the shuttle that NASA should postpone liftoff–again? No, said Mason. Lund followed suit.
https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2020/01/27/leadership-lessons-from-the-challenger-disaster.html
As you can see from the above conversation, the management decided to go ahead with the launch despite contrary evidence on the ground and the rest is history.
Another example of this behaviour can be seen in the vastly successful show “Silicon Valley” below –
Lesson Learnt -As product managers, it is important to speak truth to power and explain why a certain decision is wrong and avoid disasters.Easier said than done , but it is the job of a product manager to call this out when he/she sees a train wreck about to happen.
b. Check your assumptions
This was an accident which had many many warnings.
Much of the reasoning about risk at Nasa effectively took the form that, if disaster hadn’t happened yet, it probably wouldn’t happen next time either.As Feynman points out, we only have to think of a game of Russian roulette to see the problem with that reasoning. Instead Feynman recommended looking for warning signs. In Challenger’s case the O-rings were known to corrode and this warning was arguably not given sufficient weight.
The scientist didn’t mince words: He pointed out that NASA management ranked the safety of the shuttles thousands of times higher than the engineers did, which encouraged unrealistic launch timelines and a tendency to underestimate risky flight conditions. Look at the video below ( Watch it from 2:30 minutes onwards) where Feynman clearly explains why he thinks this disaster happened-
Lesson Learnt –
- Be a pessimist when it comes to project management. Risk is about things that haven’t actually happened. We can study the past of course, but past performance is not necessarily a guide to the future.
- Plan for disasters(what will happen if your app is operated in offline scenarios?, what will happen if suddenly one of the data centers where your majority of the users are there crashes? etc.)
- Plan for these scenarios and have steps to mitigate those steps in the order of probability of those events happening
- Test your product rigorously and collect telemetry data
- Question the assumptions made by your engineering teams when they build solutions.
c. Find your Allies and Play Good Politics
During the Roger Commission investigation, it was clear that the committee main objective was to absolve NASA and not make them look bad. It was clear to members of the committee that this was not a committee meant to identify the truth.
Sally Ride, the first female U.S. astronaut, was part of the subcommittee. Ride anonymously leaked a NASA document to former Air Force General Kutyna that indicated NASA was aware that cold temperatures could damage a critical component on the solid rocket booster: the rubber O-rings used to seal gases.
Kutyna, then-director of the Air Force’s Space Systems realized Feynman was the only member of the commission who enjoyed complete freedom from political pressure and used this relationship to transfer this information in a subtle way which was used cleverly(more on that in the next point on presenting data) by Feynman to make the public aware of this monumental blunder and make the commission agree that they could not protect NASA anymore.
Lesson Learnt –
- As product managers, there is lesson to be learnt here on finding your allies and using that to get your job done in the face of insurmountable bureaucracy.
- Politics has a negative rap but when used properly , it can be a superpower which can help you achieve your goals and do what is best for your customers.
d. The power of demonstration
After the disaster, the public was clamouring for evidence and everyone was trying to make sense of what happened during those fateful 74 seconds, there were a lot of theories about what happened but no one was able to communicate this clearly to the audience.
In the Rogers Commission hearing which investigated the disaster, there was evidence of NASA officials deliberately trying to cover up the evidence of the risk .
Richard Feynman demonstrated very clearly to everyone in the world about the disaster that was the O-ring and the impact of cold temperature on the o-ring. This demonstration moved the perception against NASA and helped build a case against the fact that there had been a cover up.
Watch this video below to understand the importance of demonstration to communicate ideas-
How many times have you been in a meeting when you have tried to explain a complex topic and you fail to grasp the audience because they could not understand what you are talking about?
The onus lies on product managers to communicate and convince the audience on their decisions so that they can get the support from their stakeholders. Another example of the power of demonstration can be learnt from the great Steve Jobs as he demonstrates the iphone to the world. Can you imagine how effective this presentation would have been without demonstration?
Final Thoughts
After the Challenger disaster , NASA did a lot of steps to fix the systemic issues which had led to this disaster.
It opened itself up to an increased level of external oversight. And for a while, it became more conservative in its pace of scheduled launches and decision making. In the year following the disaster: “The fiscal 1988 budget calls for a 76 percent increase — to $16.2 million — for safety, reliability and quality assurance programs.”
The space shuttle program resumed flights in 1988, after NASA engineers made some 200 changes to the rocket, shuttle and rocket boosters.
Since the Challenger disaster, NASA has sent many astronauts to space, discovered water on Mars and continues to be the world’s leading country in terms of innovation in space technology.
“The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.”
Ronald Reagan
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