“None of us is as dumb as all of us,” says a sign on the wall in a meeting room at NASA.
Why does NASA use such a simple motto?
At first reading, this statement seems counter-intuitive.
In life, you are taught that by collaborating, you can arrive at a better solution than by working alone.
That’s true, but there’s a caveat.
And NASA learned that lesson the hard way.
It’s part of what went wrong with the tragic Columbia and Challenger shuttle explosions.
At critical moments, in rooms filled with some of the smartest people on the planet, NASA teams have shown themselves to be capable of "Groupthink”.
A veteran of four space flights, Scott Kelly commanded the International Space Station on three expeditions and was a member of the year-long mission aboard the ISS, the single longest space mission by an American astronaut.
Scott is also an incredible storyteller.
He exhibits the most important quality in a leader - humility.
His humble mindset in contrast with true accomplishment is a gentle reminder that success is accessible to anyone who has a dream that they feel passionately about.
"Go For Launch: How to Dream, Lead, and Achieve" is Scott's online course I’ve just completed.
One lesson in particular stood out and hit me on a personal level.
Scott talks about how he makes decisions.
Actually, considering his job, almost all decisions are life-or-death decisions.
Near the beginning of commanding his space shuttle, Mission Control informed him there was a hole the size of a golf ball in the heat shield.
That’s a bummer!
Imagine you’re in his shoes, orbiting around the Earth in a tiny little capsule and you're told there’s a hole in your shield.
Not a little microscopic crack, but a goddamn hole.
A similar hole had killed seven astronauts a few years earlier as they reentered the earth’s atmosphere on the Columbia space shuttle.
Scott had to choose - risk reentry with the hole in the safety shield or attempt to fix the damage with a dangerous spacewalk which might make the hole worse.
As commander, he had a lot of say in what his approach was going to be.
"It would've been tempting to make a quick decision on my own but over the years I’ve spent leading and following, I’ve learned that the best decisions aren’t made that way," he said.
Instead, Scott took each crew member aside one-by-one in private to get their honest opinions.
Let me pause here.
Pay attention to words.
He said "leading and following."
Every leader must be ready and willing to take charge and make hard calls for the good of the team and the mission.
That’s understood.
Something much more difficult to understand is that to be a good leader, one must also be a good follower.
To lead, you have to follow and keep your ego in check.
There’s a fine line that leaders must walk, balancing between the two seemingly opposite inclinations.
This is a dichotomy - a Dichotomy of Leadership.
Scott made sure he spoke to each of his crew members individually to get their honest opinions.
Again, the keyword here is “individually”.
He took this to such an extreme that he asked everyone he could, even Russian astronauts, though they would not be traveling home on the shuttle.
He did it because he remembered: None of us is as dumb as all of us.
It’s such a powerful axiom to live by.
Scott types here:
"Why not call a meeting? Why not make a decision together as a group? Well, I’ve seen what can happen when people try to make decisions in groups. One person will offer an opinion, and if that person is knowledgeable or well-respected, everyone else might go along with what they said. Groupthink sets in. People aren’t even conscious of doing this sometimes. It’s something we do as a social species to get along, and it’s often a useful instinct. But in a case like this, it could be deadly.”
Groupthink, first studied by Irving Janis, is a psychological phenomenon where a group makes decisions in a way that discourages creativity and individual responsibility for the decision.
Members of a group often feel peer pressure to "go along with the crowd" in fear of rocking the boat.
They avoid raising controversial issues.
Rather than objecting to poor decisions, they remain silent.
They don’t speak up.
In search of consensus, they steer away from alternative solutions.
They stay within the comfort zone.
The most famous thought experiment regarding groupthink is the Abilene paradox.
It goes like this:
"Four Texans are relaxing at home. One suggests taking a trip to Abilene for dinner, and another, who has reservations about the idea because the 53-mile drive is (pre-air-conditioning) hot and dusty, agrees, just to be polite. A third, who doesn’t want to go but doesn’t want to defy the wants of the group, also agrees, and a fourth follows suit. Upon their return from a rather lackluster meal, each member expresses his or her initial lack of enthusiasm about making the trip in the first place; and the originator of the idea acknowledges that he only made the suggestion because he thought the others were bored. The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted."
As the sworn enemy of innovation, groupthink is nothing more than fear-based conformity.
The unfortunate outcome is that a well-meaning team of people will sometimes make a horrible decision that no single individual would ever make.
Think of The Bay of Pigs Invasion of April 1961.
The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
"Die Welle" directed by Dennis Gansel.
"The Big Short”, an Oscar-winning film about the banking industry collapse in 2008.
There’s "The Flying Bank” Swissair debacle.
And the list goes on and on.
Alarming, isn't it?
"People who raised concerns were silenced because groupthink had taken over.” - Scott Kelly on Columbia accident
Now, back to Scott.
With input from crew and ground controllers, he finally decided to attempt a landing without repairs.
The crew sat silent as they passed through the altitude where the Columbia had disintegrated.
"Looks like we dodged that bullet," Scott told the crew as they remembered their fallen teammates.
They landed safely 30 minutes later at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
While Scott was on the shuttle, the wife of his identical twin brother Mark, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head in a horrible Tucson shooting.
Mark used a similar process of information gathering while figuring out the best course of treatment for his wife’s recovery.
Instead of just hearing out the top doctor or more experienced experts, Mark would go a step further.
He would find "a quiet person in the back of the room" and ask them who they were.
“I’m just an intern,” they might say, or, “I’m just a nurse.”
But Mark didn’t care what the person’s training was.
Like his brother on the space shuttle, he was attacking the problem from multiple directions.
“What do you think?”
“What are we missing?"
"What are we overlooking?”
Even if they hadn’t been there long, their opinion mattered, and he learned valuable information by gathering as many perspectives as he could.
“The smartest person in the room, I’ve learned, is usually the person who knows how to tap into the intelligence of every person in the room,” sums up Scott.
This is valuable advice for all of us.
“I have learned that you cannot ask the shuttle commander, the flight director, the chief engineer, or the program manager for their opinion first. If you do, you won’t get effective advice from the people below them.” - Scott Kelly
Don’t let groupthink, or your ego, dominate an important choice.
Search widely for insights to make the best possible decision.
Remain open to criticism.
Work with diverse groups of people.
Include members outside the group in meetings and decision-making.
Why?
Here’s one great reason: You’re probably wrong.
Not about everything, but more than you think.
You, like me, probably aren’t seeing the whole picture.
“You don’t want to be surrounded by ‘yes-men.’ You want to be surrounded by people who are going to say, “Hey Boss, I have a better way.” - Jocko Willink
In 1974, Stephen Hawking bet a fellow physicist Kip Throne a year-long subscription to Penthouse magazine that the bright object in the constellation Cygnus was not a black hole.
Throne, believing it was, took the bet and went to work.
16 years later, he proved the black hole existed, won the bet, and the magazines were delivered.
This wouldn’t be the last time Hawking made and lost a public bet with a peer.
He bet Peter Higgs $100 that the Higgs boson - a subatomic particle that was Higg’s legacy - would never be found.
Hawking actually made this bet in a room full of reporters, who then told the whole world.
Higgs didn’t appreciate the public callout.
Physicists are only as good as they are correct, and being wrong meant losing respect, funding, and opportunities.
But Hawking didn’t see it that way.
He figured whether he was right or wrong, public wagers would challenge and push science forward.
In fact, it was the Penthouse bet with Throne that got an entire generation of scientists interested in black holes.
And when the Higgs particle was found, Hawking proudly paid the $100 and publicly congratulated Higgs.
Abraham Lincoln was another human more interested in truth than personal beliefs.
When he was elected, he filled his cabinet with the same men who ran against him.
Known today as his Team of Rivals, Lincoln surrounded himself with people who openly ridiculed and challenged him.
The CIA uses Red Teams — teams dedicated to finding weaknesses and loose ends in the intelligence community.
When the government thinks it knows something, a Red Team goes to work to prove it wrong.
After the raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, White House officials credited Red Team analysis for providing the level of certainty needed to greenlight the mission.
Hawking, Lincoln, and the CIA all knew the danger of not having their personal beliefs challenged.
They understood that the more power a person or group has, the more likely they’ll end up in an echo chamber of yes.
To combat this, they actively sought out the people and information that could change their minds.
They already knew what they believed.
What they wanted was to be proven wrong.
They needed someone to protect them from themselves.
And you can’t do that with yes-men.
I had a wonderful client a few years ago.
She was a very sharp business lady.
I learned early on about her unique management style and engagement with her team and myself.
I admire her and won't forget what she taught me about leadership.
“Challenge my thinking,” she used to say in our meetings.
“Help me poke holes in my ideas so that we may come to a better solution.”
I loved it.
Notice the careful wording she'd use.
Challenge my thinking, instead of, I don’t agree with you.
Help me poke holes in my idea.
I’ve met many leaders.
Very few have the confidence in their teams to openly warrant disagreement and discussion.
Disagreement can be healthy so long as the team remains focused on the goal at hand and nothing gets personal.
It's healthy to disagree.
But don’t just stop at disagreement.
The next important step is alignment.
Michael Hyatt said in a great blog post "disagree but always align.'
What terrific advice.
You may not always be able to get agreement, but you can get alignment.
People may disagree with the direction you’re taking.
That’s ok.
But if they feel you have listened to them and considered their case, they will align with the decision and support it when you call for it.
When you call the next meeting, remember the stark warning painted on the wall at the Houston complex.
None of us is as dumb as all of us.
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