Re: OT: Dark Side of Management

From: <Christopher>
Date: Sat Mar 24 2007 - 23:29:00 EDT

On Mar 24, 2007, at 4:42 PM, Tony Paulin wrote:

> Of all the knot-headed
> personalities I've encountered in engineering, I don't remember one
> that
> would even think about sacrificing safety for profit, (unless I am
> incredibly naive - which is highly likely).
Read this. <http://onlineethics.org/essays/shuttle/telecon.html#fig10>

I think if you'd told the attendees at the pre-launch meeting that they cared more about profit than safety you'd have gotten some pretty outraged responses. But they wanted to launch so badly that they ignored previous experience and figured that it was safe to launch because there was no absolute proof that the seal would malfunction. The situation was ambiguous, to the extent that no booster had ever blown up before although there are indications that there was a lower limit to the temperature that the seal would work. The decision was made over-ruling the judgment of Boisjoly who knew what he was talking about, not because management didn't care about crew safety but because they wanted to launch so very much that they figured they could keep on getting lucky. The real dark side of management isn't ignoring safety, it's the ability to convince themselves that a firm handshake and a can-do attitude trumps Mother Nature.

Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=C77TbLrzjmpsVZ6YbddRrvKseN7XfFcdpQEHWfAjrCmez-IrS0O5jzhn-nABuTP4LjgV5R6-q6dS6tkw">chrisw@skypoint.com</a> | this distance" (last words of Gen.

.......................................| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania

1864)
<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw/">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw/</a> Received on Sat Mar 24 23:29:00 2007