The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Risk Management Lessons from the Challenger Disaster | S4Ep11

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

The Challenger disaster serves as a stark reminder of the importance of rigorous risk assessment and the potential consequences of ignoring or downplaying warnings. In Risk Management Lessons from the Challenger Disaster, I'm paralleling takeaways from the Challenger disaster with how Project Managers can reduce project risk through effective risk management.Godspeed to the Challenger Astronauts Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, and Gregory B. Jarvis

Earlier this week, I shared some thoughts and tools on how to get past paralysis during analysis. But sometimes your analysis leads you to conclusions that are scary and that you shouldn't move past. And an example I'm going to share with some parallels to project management is the Challenger disaster that serves as a stark reminder, right, to the importance of rigorous risk management and the potential consequences of ignoring or downplaying warnings. But first, please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and let's get started with the People Process Progress Podcast. Three, two, one. Engineers at Morton Thiokol, that's the manufacturer that built the solid rocket boosters, warned of potential O-ring problems at low temperatures. And as a reminder, the Challenger launched and unfortunately subsequently exploded in January of 1986.

So we know from the people that made this thing that's a huge component of the shuttle, when it's cold, these O-rings can have problems. But they weren't fully appreciated or adequately addressed by NASA management and there was a tendency to downplay risks, which is dangerous and which risk evaluation is a component we talked about in the earlier episode about paralysis by analysis, but not at the cost of the safety of our people, right? There was political pressure. There is a desire to maintain how do we look, right? But sometimes you have to be objective and real and you have to communicate well. And that communication and the risks associated with the O-rings led to a poor

decision to launch and ultimately led to the death of the seven shuttle crew members of Kristen McAuliffe, Michael Smith, Judith Resnick, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Gregory Jarvis. So some key takeaways from the Challenger is the importance of engineering judgment. I'm going to parallel these to project managers, right? Four project managers, which I am one. And it's the importance of engineer judgment. If you have someone that's an engineer, that's an expert on this thing, you need to listen to them. Now you do have to balance that with other factors, but if they say this thing fails when it's cold and it's cold outside and they're sitting on top of a bunch of fuel, that's dangerous, right? The dangers of groupthink. There was pressure, a whole bunch of

people, policymakers were like, well, this is going to look bad if we don't launch. And we really said we were going to meet the state, so we have to hold to it. And then open communication, that's a huge thing that has to exist. It usually exists as a strength sometimes and then as a problem other times, or often both in the same after action report. But we have to have clear and open communication channels. These are essential, especially for risk decision making. So what are the parallels to project manager? So I'm in the healthcare IT space, but whether you're in construction or the automotive industry or anything, the first one's almost exactly the same. The importance of engineering judgment, right? If you have technical folks, your subject matter experts are sneeze, as we say, and project planning, listen to them. Take what they say.

Encourage open dialogue. I'm not going to talk over you because I'm the project manager. You're the one I want to hear from. Just tell me what to put in the plan. And then we need to respect that technical expertise. They've asked us to come facilitate a process. We've asked that to come solve the problem and plan something out. And then the second, again, groupthink. If we get a bunch of folks, they're thinking negative or they're thinking, no, we should

do it because it looks better and we're, my manager's going to get mad at me or what's leadership going to think or we have a bunch of yes men in the group, that's a problem. That's a bad culture. And we need to regularly review the decisions. Is the decision we made before good? Is it not good? How do we improve on that? How do we keep making decisions, well-informed decisions, well-communicated decisions, and connect these through risk assessments. And there's, I would suggest,

I have no kickbacks or anything. I use smart sheets a lot and then adjust it and customize it for my needs, but they have a great risk and probability matrix that I suggest you all take a look at. And the third thing that open communication and project management, right? All the stakeholders need to know what's happening. Not just me as the project manager, like two other people, the entire team should know where we are, where we're headed, what we've done, why we're behind, why we're ahead. It should be communicated regularly with everybody that you can. And again, probably the most important statement that could have made a difference for the challenger that can make a difference for your projects is fostering transparency in the project team, right? We don't want secrets. We don't want people

not communicating because they're worried what I'm going to think or what somebody else is going to think or, well, this didn't work last time or, you know, they're talked over or they're shy or they're quiet or they're introverted. We as project managers, as team leaders, owe it to the team to help foster those communications and get that message out that's so critical. So in both situations, I want to parallel and highlight the importance of this, particularly if you're a government entity planning things where people's lives are at stake or in healthcare IT or in public safety or incident management. You have to prioritize safety and quality over short-term gains. You have to conduct thorough and objective risk short-term gains. You have to conduct thorough and objective risk assessments, right? You just got to be honest about it and open. Value the expertise and experience of team members, right? I can be an expert but not have years of

experience as somebody else who has seen, you know, different variations of what I know maybe in the book or something or vice versa. And again, maintain open and honest communications throughout the project lifecycle. Thank you for sticking through this whole episode's lifecycle of the People Process Progress Podcast. Again, I'm your host, Kevin Pinnell. This show is available on Apple and Spotify. I would love it if you would share it and leave a review. Please visit the peopleprocessprogress.com website. Follow me on X and IG at PinnellKG, P-A-N-E-L-O-K-G. And check out the YouTube channel, People Process Progress, where you'll get fitness ideas 15 seconds at a time, see me get into frozen water, and talk a little bit about jujitsu after I come

out of class. Remember, buddy, hope, hope to go to space, hope to have a good project should ignite everything we do. And the plans that we make together, listening to our subject matter experts, having open dialogue, should guide us along that path. And then the actions we take, sometimes based on risk or inaction we take, but the action that we decide to take, because a decision for inaction is action,

should ignite the progress we make, the safety we improve, all that kind of stuff. Stay safe out there, everybody. Have a great weekend and Godspeed.