A Global Objective
Fri., August 29, 01:36 PM
Investigations into space shuttle disasters are doubly heartbreaking, because not only have we lost good people, but there’s also usually an organizational mindset that could have avoided the problems. This kind of thinking doesn’t exist only in NASA, but in many other organizations beyond a minimal size. In other words, any group that gets so big that it has to have “middle managers.”
Nevertheless, you cannot blame all the problems on middle managers, because it isn’t all their fault. The problem arises when they are not given a reasonable objective. What’s the objective of your job? To get the product out the door? To keep your customers happy? (Unfortunately, that one has fairly low priority.) To keep costs down? To make your department look good?
That’s the problem, you see. The goal of a company is not to make the department work, it’s to make the entire establishment work. What happens instead is that the tail is wagging the dog.
How often have you seen a manager fail to hire the best qualified applicant for a position for some excuse (I won’t call it a reason) like, “he’ll cost us too much,” or “I need more minority people.” The manager’s numbers (costs, diversity) look great, and he will receive great marks on his annual review. Of course, everything coming out of the department is late, but who cares?
Or consider the following, which I watched take place. The company operated in many different states, adapting to the laws of each particular state as it pertained to that particular business. The company decided to offer its customers a new line of services, and the corporate counsel pointed out – as was his responsibility – that the new line was not legal in all the states where it would be offered. They fired the counsel. Then they didn’t have to worry about it.
A good explanation of global objectives is offered in The Goal, a novel by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It’s easy reading. Dr. Goldratt also used to say, “tell me how you measure me and I’ll tell you how I’ll behave.”
So you have NASA managers hesitant to raise the questions of safety because that might hold up the schedule of the flights. And no one has bothered to mention that maybe bringing the crew back to earth is more important than being a few months late in taking off.
We sent men to the moon, but we couldn’t be smart enough to manage our own program. As my dad used to say, it’s enough to make you weep!
