Incurious Organizations and the Terrible Damage They Cause

On January 27, 1986, a lone engineer at Morton Thiokol, Roger Boisjoly, warned his superiors yet again about the danger of launching the Space Shuttle Challenger the next day, arguing that because of the unseasonably cold weather at the launch site, where the temperature was forecast to dip below freezing overnight, the O-rings manufactured by the company were at risk of failing during the launch, with disastrous consequences. Several months before, Boisjoly (whose name is pronounced like the wine “Beaujolais”) had taken the lead in putting together an extensive internal memo arguing that cold weather would likely cause the O-ring seals to separate, allowing super-hot gasses to escape from the engines. “The result could be a catastrophe of the highest order, loss of human life,” the memo declared.[i]

The next day, early on the morning of the scheduled launch, Boisjoly and 14 of his engineering colleagues at the company joined together to implore their senior managers to advise NASA to postpone. The managers, however, felt pressured by NASA to approve the launch, because of the immense PR value that was riding on this event. And with a $400 million contract for space agency work in the balance, the company acceded to NASA’s wishes, over-riding the engineers’ concern and giving an okay for the launch to proceed. Fearing a terrible outcome, Boisjoly could not bring himself to watch it live on television, with the rest of the nation.

Not long after the disaster, Boisjoly’s memo to his bosses was made public, precipitating a firestorm of criticism, and during the extensive federal investigation of the event Boisjoly became known as a whistleblower. Many hailed him as a hero whose voice was simply drowned out by corporate greed. In actuality, of course, he wasn’t really a whistleblower at all; he was simply a dissenter whose contrary point of view was inappropriately (and disastrously) ignored.

Boisjoly presented a data point that was consciously suppressed for reasons that had nothing to do with the science of decision-making, and everything to do with the preservation of the organization.

Curiosity may be a moral virtue, but it is also an explicit act of rebellion that organizations and social groups find threatening. So while human beings might be curious by nature, curious dissenters just aren’t very popular within large organizations. As it turns out, Morton Thiokol soon demoted Boisjoly along with another engineer who had been vocal in his protest of the Challenger launch, moving them both into less prestigious areas of the firm that weren’t involved in space work.

He also found himself shunned by his own colleagues and co-workers, who didn’t want to associate with someone now perceived as a turncoat. He told a newspaper a year later that a former friend and colleague of his had told him, “If you wreck this company, I’m going to put my kids on your doorstep.”

Roger Boisjoly’s story should serve as a lesson to all of us. At nearly every public company (as well as at most large private ones) there is some sort of official process for receiving negative feedback from employees, sometimes even on an anonymous basis. These kinds of programs are set up explicitly to ensure that a company’s senior management can find out about any dangerous, fraudulent, environmentally damaging or otherwise problematic activities known to employees.

Yet at most large firms, dissent that threatens an already widely accepted process or course of action, as Boisjoly’s did, is treated with condescension and skepticism, if not outright hostility. Dissenting points of view certainly aren’t welcomed, and dissenters themselves are often simply shunned.

The decisions made and actions taken by a hierarchical organization will almost always accord with the judgments and opinions of the organization’s highest ranking members, sometimes even in spite of highly compelling contrary data. Hierarchical organizations actively suppress curiosity, unless the leaders at the top of the hierarchy are themselves curious.

[i] Roger Boisjoly’s story is from Peter Shankman’s book Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management Is Over--and Collaboration Is In.