Insights for 23 January 2007

Adhocracy- An adhocracy is when programs and projects are built on people rather than forcing people to adapt to the programs and projects. This is more efficient because a manager can get the “right” people on the bus. Skills can be matched to needs rather than requiring people to do things they aren’t equipped to do. An adhocracy also has the benefit of bringing people with different perspectives together. In the Columbia mission, this adhocracy could have proven highly beneficial. An adhocracy was created during the Apollo 13 crisis. The management of NASA formed a Tiger Team, which is a group of expert individuals from different parts of NASA whose mission was to come up with creative solutions to avert the death of the astronauts. They were able to pool their resources and knowledge to save the mission from complete disaster. In the case of the Columbia, NASA should have done the same thing.

The people who get ahead share the most knowledge- Sharing knowledge has long been frowned upon by corporate America because of our capitalist system. Those who possess knowledge have the exclusive rights to production. This system is probably still necessary in between companies, but it should not exist within a company. When information is shared, ideas can be critiqued and improved. Also, people become more versatile because they have a wider breadth of knowledge. Thus, the aggregate benefits, and everybody wins, including the person who first possessed the knowledge. The people of NASA should have felt compelled to share all the knowledge they could on the dangers of the space shuttle in order to get the greatest gain for all.

People want improvement but still resist change- There is a popular definition of insanity that defines it as “Doing the same thing the same way twice and expecting different results.” It is obvious that in order for things to get better, something has to change. In the case of NASA, they should have expected the same problems to occur with the foam breaking off of the space shuttle. It was a foreseeable problem, and they should have expected similar results every time.