Paul Hovnanian P.E. said:
Jeff said:
[snip]
I found the IEEE Spectrum article interesting in that it demonstrated
that assigning the blame really is the first step in solving a
problem. In most bureaucratic organizations, this initial step is
vital. I've worked for companies where a culprit must be found before
any problem can be fixed.
Said with tongue firmly in cheek, I'm sure. ;-)
I only wish that were true. One particular employer (name withheld to
protect the guilty) had a chief engineer that apparently believed that
it really was necessary to assign the blame before proceeding with the
damage control. It was not some malevolent manifestation of evil
intentions, but simply the way he operated. Once a problem was
discovered, there was a short preliminary investigation. The
inevitable question of "why did this happen" would surface, followed
by the requisite finger pointing. None of the engineers ever really
understood the process, so we simply took turns accepting the blame.
Even when it was fairly obvious that we were turning the procedure
into a farce, the assignment of the blame continued.
There were also secondary effects. While it was desirable to have
everyone fix their own problems, it was somehow not the way things
worked. During the finger pointing stage of the process, everyone was
on the defensive. Blaming the actual culprit was impossible because
they would be so irate at having been blamed, they would tend to do
more damage than do damage control. So, the damage control was always
assigned to someone totally uninvolved in the project, with
predictable results. We solved this problem by deciding who was going
to fix the problem in advance, and then made sure that during the
finger pointing stage, that person was never assigned the blame, even
if they were guilty as charged.
Despite the apparently dysfunctional appearance of this procedure, it
does work (somehow). The company has been around for about 37 years
and is doing fairly well these days as a division of a larger
conglomerate. However, they've gone through several major changes in
management and ownership, which hopefully have inspired them to change
their ways.
In organizations heavily invested in accident analysis, troubleshooting
and life safety (FAA/NTSB, NFPA, etc.) the policy is to defer assigning
the blame until after the forensics is done. In many cases, penalties
are forgiven permanently in order to encourage open exchanges of
information necessary to support investigations.
I've never worked for or with any of these, but I suspect that's only
true for external affairs. The entire purpose of the organization is
to assign the blame (and make recommendations to prevent a
repetition). Of course it would be bad policy to prematurely announce
a culprit before the final report. However, my guess is that
internally, procedures are not quite so correct and proper. I watched
this happen during the Y2K transition. Many companies had official
policy of not revealing any problems precipitated by the Y2K change.
From the outside, it was business as usual with only minor problems.
To those inside some of the companies, it was a running fire drill for
a few days.
In my experience, it is these situations that cause the incompetents to
surface and insist upon blame assignment up front. Its a means of
protecting a reputation when they know that the odds are high that the
sh*t will end up in their lap in the end. Get it put in the meeting
minutes up front and if the issue ever comes back at them, they can
brush it aside by demanding that closed items not be revisited. The best
defense is often a good offense.
Nice. Business politics is so much fun. I've never seen that happen.
What I've seen is premature guesswork that often sounds plausible.
Usually, there's an agenda involved. For example, when honey bee
colonies were found to be dying off, some nut case immediately blamed
cell towers as the culprit. When TWA 800 fell out of the sky, Pierre
Salinger got front page coverage by blaming a US Navy missile. The
GUM (great unwashed masses) want answers, and quickly, even if the
answers are wrong. Corporate America isn't much better.
Competent individuals can survive a few screw-ups in their careers and
will in fact learn from them. Its called lessons learned and it
demonstrates an individuals' ability to improve.
I have a few skeletons in my closet, where I've made some major
mistakes. Fortunately, no lives were lost or anyone injured, but the
financial damage was substantial. At the least, I believe in "Learn
by Destroying" which implies that if one hasn't made any mistakes, one
also hasn't learned very much. Mistakes are a great but expensive way
to learn.
This illustrates one of the primary arguments for manned space missions.
In spite of the additional expenses involved, having people available to
pop a cover off of something and look is the only way to catch all the
stuff that can't be handled remotely.
Agreed, mostly. I suspect human surrogates (i.e. robots) might be
useful. Whether an inspection robot would have caught the
condensation problem is doubtful. It has to know what to consider
normal in advance. If water isn't on the list, it will probably
ignore it.