U S Airways on June 16, 2011

In USA Today on July 21, 2011 was a full page ad by US Airways Pilot’s Association. The following is based on that ad.  The ad recounted an event on June 16, 2011 when a US Airways Captain with 30 years of experience kept her flight from departing at night for a flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Her reason for stopping the flight was a bulky power component that had been failing and might continue to fail and that failure could have eliminated all electrical power on the plane’s trans-Atlantic flight.

 

Despite her concerns, she was pressured by management to fly the plane over the Atlantic Ocean that night. When she refused, she was escorted out of the airport by US Airway’s security. Her crew was threatened with arrest if they did not cooperate.

Before she left the airplane, two other US Airways Pilots also refused to fly the plane that night. After she left the airplane, three more US Airway Pilots refused to fly the plane.

The pilots were right. The power unit was faulty. It was replaced and then the plane was safely flown that night over the Atlantic Ocean.

The point is management initially decided to override their experts’ opinions which could have resulted in an expensive loss (the plane) and many lives of crew and passengers.

They changed their decision after 6 pilots refused to fly the plane that night before repairs were made.

Management then allowed the repairs to be made before the plane was flown over the Atlantic Ocean that night.

 

BP – Deepwater Horizon Drilling Platform Explosion in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010

 

Pierre Towns on 06/21/10  in his article “A Tragic Example of How the Lack of Employee Empowerment Extinguished 11 Lives”  recounts how that tragedy could have been avoided. The below is recounted from that article.

Jason Anderson was an expert and experienced tool pusher for Trans Ocean, the drilling contractor for BP on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. His wife, Shelly Anderson told Lisa Myers of NBC how in his last rotation home,  he was very worried about “getting everything in order”, he had his will drawn up, etc. He was concerned that something bad was going to happen.

After returning to the drilling platform he called his wife several times to tell her they were being pressured from higher up to do things that weren’t the way Jason thought they should be done. It involved a safety issue.  Higher management wanted to finish the well faster and were not using the best procedures. Jason Anderson died in the explosion that occurred shortly after that.

BP management did not listen to its experts like Jason Anderson and the result was great cost  (19 billion dollars and counting), the loss of 11 lives, and damage to the ecosystem.

Source of Cost: http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2011/03/30/192306.htm

 

Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster on January 28, 1986

 

After many delays, Challenger was supposed to lift off on January 28, 1986. It was a very cold morning for Florida (31 degrees F). Morton Thiokol engineers were concerned about the effects of the low temperatures on the “resilence” of the rubber O rings that sealed the joints of the Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) forcing the hot high pressure gases out the nozzle in the rear end of each rocket. If these O-rings failed it would destroy the orbiter and its crew. NASA personnel thought that the second O-ring in the pair would seal. However, these were Criticality 1 components and as pointed out by Astronaut Sally Ride in questioning NASA managers before the Rogers Commission, it was forbidden to rely on a backup for a Criticality 1 component.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster

Management decided to override their experts and go ahead with the launch. The cost to replace the Challenger Space Shuttle by building Space Shuttle Endeavor was $1.7 billion dollars.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html

The cost of the human lives is priceless.

 

 

Employees Can Be The Experts Who Can Prevent Embarrassing, Expensive, and Tragic Disasters

 

Management needs to empower employees to speak up about safety concerns and then management needs to seriously consider these employee concerns in their decision making. If your employee(s) is(are) truly the expert(s) then allow him(them) to have a very big part in the decision making.

Probably your workplace does not involve expensive situations like those cited above. However, you could have situations that still could be costly and embarrassing if operations went wrong.

Do you empower your employees?

To learn more about empowering employees, check out Module 8 – Empower Your Employees to Excel.

Copyright 2011-12 Lois Moncrief All Rights Reserved