Hey Retailers, Any Black Friday Jitters?

On one of my morning runs, I was listening to a podcast, which delved into reasons on why on August 6, 1997, Korean Air Flight A801 crashed while landing at Gaum. This particular story caught my attention as the prime reason that was identified was poor communication between flight crew and not a catastrophic system failure.?

I learnt that there were many factors that were not ideal. It was raining heavily in Guam, so visibility was considerably reduced, and the crew decided to attempt an instrument landing. Unfortunately, the instrument landing system was out of service, but Captain mistakenly believed it was in service. What is striking is that the first officer and flight engineer noticed that airplane was descending very steeply, and remarked several times, which were ignored by the Captain as he continued with the approach. Not until 6 seconds before the crash did the flight crew began to challenge the Captain. According to the cockpit voice recorder, the flight crew suggested to the captain that he had made a mistake, but did not explicitly warn him. The flight crew had the opportunity to be more aggressive in its challenge and the first officer even had the opportunity to take over control of the aircraft and execute a missed approach himself, which would have prevented the accident, but he did not do this.?

I was stunned. I stopped running. The sweat rolling down from side of my face seemed to freeze. I was imagining myself in the flight and could not believe why the crew wouldn't raise hell and take over the controls much earlier? After all, you know you are going to crash if you continue the path, with no corrective action taken.?

My ’ah’ moment came with further analysis which is explained in Outliers’ book by Malcom Gladwell. Per the book, the reasons run deep pertaining to some cultures and upbringing, where questioning superiors and authority figures is discouraged more than other cultures. Also, they employ a manner of speech that is indirect and suggestive with the superiors, rather than direct and imperative, which would lead to the above situation where grave dangers and corrective actions are being communicated as mere ‘suggestions’ instead of a more urgent approach.

Now, my whole point of bringing this up is, as an engineering and technology leader in retail space and managing a diverse team which is spread across the globe, I started thinking, are there any such cultural biases my team has which can lead to our mission critical systems go down? With an ever changing mix of employees/contractors in most teams, spread across the globe, many working remotely, how much do you know of your team, where they come from and what cultural biases they may have? Does your team feel empowered to speak up and take corrective actions when it matters? Have you asked teams to bring forth issues seen in monitoring dashboards, logs, code, alerts etc directly, loud and clear? Does your team know when to raise hell and much before 6 seconds to crash?

These questions should resonate a lot with retailers, especially during this time of year, as retailers are busy preparing their systems for their peak period starting from Black Friday through Christmas. This is arguably when most retailers do the maximum business and go ‘black’ in financial terms, i.e. in profit, so understandably having the system go down, even for a short time, during this period is catastrophic.. although no comparison to a plane crash, and yes it's an extreme example, but I guess it helps to drive the point home, to address these questions and prep your teams accordingly and not be blindsided, even though your systems presumably are well architected and performance tested, to help avoid any Black Friday jitters! Wishing a great flight and a safe landing this peak season to all retailers!!