Question Authority, or Authority will put Every Human Value in Question

Gates Tells West Point Graduates to Question Authority
  

WEST POINT, N.Y. -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged the nation's future Army officers to question authority, challenge conventional wisdom and work to avoid the dangerous "groupthink" that often takes root in military circles.
In a commencement speech Saturday to a packed football stadium at this storied military academy, Mr. Gates told hundreds of West Point graduates that the Army's traditional consensus-driven culture was ill-suited to the complex challenges of modern warfare in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The defense chief encouraged the cadets, who will soon be commissioned into the Army, to tell higher-ranking officers what they needed to hear, as opposed to what they wanted to hear.
"The higher up you go, the stronger the pressure to smooth off the rough edges, paper over problems, close the proverbial ranks and stay on message," he told the cadets and their families. "The hardest thing you may ever be called upon to do is stand alone among your peers and superior officers."
Mr. Gates said he would not "pretend that there is not risk" to standing up to higher-ranking officers. "But that does not make taking that stand any less necessary for the sake of our Army and our country," he said.
The speech was Mr. Gates's latest attempt to shake up how the military prepares for and fights its wars, his top priority. A holdover from the Bush administration, Mr. Gates has stepped up his efforts under President Barack Obama to reorient the Pentagon and the broader defense establishment in Washington. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124309348312949927.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The Decision Making Process at the root of Japanese Nuclear Meltdown
A long but worthwhile case study of how we all make decisions and behave in business settings. Reality is usually the opposite of our ideals — predictably. In groups, the main problems we all concentrate on are:
• Protecting our immediate position/status/benefits
• Defending the status quo

TOKYO – Nearly 10 years after Japan’s top utility first assured the government that its Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was safe from any tsunami, regulators were just getting around to checking out the claim. The move was too little, too late.
But even if there had been scrutiny years before the fury of an earthquake-powered wave swamped the six atomic reactors at Fukushima on March 11, it is almost certain the government wouldn’t have challenged the unrealistic analysis that Tokyo Electric Power Co. had submitted in 2001. An Associated Press review of Japan’s approach to nuclear plant safety shows how closely intertwined relationships between government regulators and industry allowed a culture of complacency to prevail.
Regulators simply didn’t see it as their role to pick apart the utility’s raw data and computer modeling to judge for themselves whether the plant was sufficiently protected from tsunami. The policy amounted to this: Trust plant operator TEPCO — don’t worry about verifying its math or its logic.
http://brain4biz.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/japans-nuclear-system-meltdown-real-decision-making-behaviors-in-groups/

Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster
Group Decision Support System (GDSS) - Situational Analysis and THE DECISION TO LAUNCH

A group support system did exist between NASA and Thiokol, the subcontractor directly responsible for the development of the SRB "O" rings. The GDSS system between NASA and Thiokol consisted of same-time/different-place conference rooms equipped with a connected and distributed computer interface. Speaker phones with audio only were also available.
On the evening of January 27, 1986, Thiokol was providing information to NASA regarding concerns for the next day's planned launch of STS 51-l. Thiokol engineers were very concerned that the abnormally cold temperatures would affect the "O" rings to nonperformance standards. The mission had already been canceled due to weather, and, as far as NASA was concerned, another cancellation due to weather was unthinkable. Both parties were already aware that the seals on the SRB needed upgrading but did not feel that it was critical. Though the information provided by the GDSS, with an associated expert system, showed that the "O" rings would perform under the predicted temperatures, Thiokol engineers questioned their own testing and data that were programmed into the GDSS. Thus on the eve of the Challenger launch, NASA was being informed that their GDSS had a flawed data base.
At this point, NASA requested a definitive recommendation from Thiokol on whether to launch. Thiokol representatives recommended not to launch until the outside air temperature reached 53º F. The forecast for Florida did not show temperatures reaching this baseline for several days. NASA responded with pressure on Thiokol to change their decision. NASA's level III manager, Mr. Lawrence Mulloy, responded to Thiokol's decision by asking, "My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch, next April?"
After this comment the Thiokol representatives requested five minutes to go off-line from the GDSS. During this period the Thiokol management requested the chief engineer to "take off his engineering hat and put on his management cap," suggesting that organizational goals be placed ahead of safety considerations. Thiokol reentered the GDSS and recommended that NASA launch. NASA asked if there were any other objections from any other GDSS member, and there were not.
http://dssresources.com/cases/spaceshuttlechallenger/index.html

Financial meltdown of 2007-8

Financial crisis was caused by corporate mismanagement, says US government.
2008 crash was avoidable and largely caused by unnecessary risk-taking, says financial crisis inquiry commission report.
Only six of the 10 commission members have backed the final report, all of them Democrats. Three Republican commission members have prepared a dissenting report that is more critical of government and less critical of corporations. A fourth Republican commission member, Peter Wallison, a former White House counsel to Ronald Reagan, has written his own dissenting report, that is expected to lay the blame at the feet of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage finance giants.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/view.m?id=15&gid=business/2011/jan/26/financial-crisis-us-commission&cat=business

Church Pedophilia Scandal

Crisis continues to batter the church.  A 2010 survey of U.S. dioceses by the Council for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University found the number of new abuse claims rose compared to 2009.
Dioceses received 428 credible allegations against 345 clergy. According to the survey, more than half of the accused clergy had faced previous claims and about two-thirds had already been removed from the priesthood or had died. Seven of the claims involved the abuse of minors in 2010.
Religious orders separately reported receiving 77 allegations against 60 offenders last year.
Dioceses and their insurers paid nearly $124 million in settlements, attorneys' fees and other abuse-related costs in 2010, up from about $104 million in 2009. All told, the scandal's price tag for settlements and other costs is near $3 billion, according to surveys commissioned by the bishops and news reports.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20110411/us-rel-church-abuse-report/

Putt's Law

"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand."
There are a number of related laws, particularly "Putt's Corollary":
"Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion."
Putt's Corollary means that incompetence is flushed out of the lower levels of a technocratic hierarchy, ensuring that technically competent people remain directly in charge of the actual technology while those without technical competence move into management.