MAYDAY! MAYDAY!!
The ‘Why? What? How?’ of Paradox of Success
On 15th January 2009 around 3.25 pm US Airways flight 1549 takes off from LaGuardia airport. The flight was led by Captain ‘Sully’ and his co-pilot Jeoffrey. The sky looked clear and bright but unfortunately a flock of birds got stuck in the wings and the engine got turned off.
Meaning a chaotic situation, “MAYDAY MAYDAY”!!! They were provided with options such as return to same airport or others but none of them were viable at that point with no power. Then Sully declared that ‘We are going to be in Hudson’ and that’s what happened saving 155 lives!
This was one of the golden moments in aviation history and Sully was praised for his critical decision making but he made a contrasting statement,
Everything we know in aviation, every rule in the rule book, every procedure we have, we know because someone somewhere died.
Meaning that, within the 6 minutes of the flight journey Sully together with the crew team faced the situation amazingly due to few other reasons such as,
Quick reference handbook & checklists | was a result of lessons learnt| from Series of crashes in 1930's.
Ergonomic design handled pressure from bird strike | was a result of lessons learnt | from B-17s crashes in 1960's.
Coordination between Captain and Co-pilot | was a result of lessons learnt | from United Airlines 173 crash in 1970's.
This is the paradox of success: It is built upon failure.
Then, what stops us learning from failures?
A lady called Marian Keech who said to be having a Psychic contact with a god like figure from another planet lived in State of Minnesota, USA had her own cult. Once she made a prediction based on her psychic contact,
“World would end before dawn on 21 December 1954
And you think it happened? Are you kidding me?! :P
That’s not it! The most funny part is when Marian defended by stating,
“He from other planet is so impressed with our faith that he has decided to give the earth a second chance, We saved the world!
I can see you laughing there! Well darling, don’t laugh that much because this is human nature. You and I both might have come across such. Meaning that we tend to deny our mistakes or failures. In scientific terms it is ‘Cognitive Dissonance’.
When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to re-frame the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs.
We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.
In 2002, Dr Gary S. Kaplan was appointed as chief executive in Virginia Hospital in Seattle, 2002. Well ofcourse anybody newly appointed want to come up with new initiatives right? He too did!
Being inspired by the Toyota’s production system Kaplan came up with a system to, encourage staff to make a report whenever they spotted an error that could harm patients.
Did it work? Absolutely NOT (in the beginning). You know why?
For the simple reason, Hierarchy!
Meaning that, in Healthcare culture and hierarchy, Mistakes were frowned upon while nurses and junior doctors were fearful of reporting senior colleagues.
So, what stops us learning from failures?
- Our own mindset of Denial
- Environment around us
Next, How to learn from failures?
Familiar with Unilever? No? Google please! Just kidding!! Unilever is a British-Dutch transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in London, England and Rotterdam, Netherlands. Its products include food and beverages, cleaning agents, beauty products, and personal care products. Bla bla :P
(So sure you did not read above paragraph)
Bottom line is it is a well reputed company with so many products and detergent powder is one of them. Their production facility in Liverpool had one problem. They had a problem nozzle. Basic physics behind this nozzle is that hot air comes in and turns into powder. So what was the problem? It gets clogged!
So Unilever consulted their Mathematicians, the smartest of all (they think!) who know about fluid dynamics and all that. Well surprisingly (or not :P) their one time design failed! Then Unilever turned to their Biologists (Hmm bit juicy, isn't it?)
Yes good guessing darling! They solved the puzzle! But don’t you wonder how? They were so good with evolution (in their blood).
Evolution is a process that relies on a ‘failure test’ called natural selection.
Simply meaning, which happens by small changes in vast number of generations adapting on and on. Likewise, the biologists came up with a nozzle design by making small changes to the first problem nozzle by creating 45 generations with 449 ‘failures’.
So you see my point? This a concept is called ‘Marginal Gains’ which was amazingly used and showed to the world by Sir Dave Brailsford (Google his story if you are interested! No kidding!)
So what you gotta do is just 2 things,
- Do small changes
- Measure the gain
What’s the second? Well yeah! How else would you know where you stand right?
Well then, How to learn from failures?
One way is to make use of small steps, marginal gains.
What’s next?
Apply! Try and see!
Some tips on how our team at work applied this concept
When improving a process
Example problem: What is the impact of a new functionality for the existing system?
Solution: Process by conducting a collaboration (Collab)meeting with BA (Business Analyst), DEV (Developer) and QA (Quality Assurance Engineer)
- Collab meeting + when the BA is done preparing the issue
- Collab meeting + giving time for the participants to investigate
- Collab meeting + with a follow up meeting
- Collab meeting + including further required parties
- Collab meeting + before and much ahead of sprint
As you can see, + shows the small changes done to the process!
When there is a need to improve a design
Example problem: How to improve the user experience of the existing product?
Solution: Creating small bugs wherever we see that hinders the experience of users (We meaning not just us but users’ reporting as well) and addressing such small chunks together.
So that’s all about MAYDAY MAYDAY!!!
Extracts and References from Syed, Matthew. Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success. John Murray Press. Kindle Edition.
