When the Question Decides the Answer. Challenger and the invisible forces that shape leadership judgement.
Florida, United States. 28 January 1986.
NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center with seven people on board.
Seventy-three seconds later, it broke apart. All seven crew members lost their lives.
The previous evening, engineers and managers at Morton Thiokol, the company that manufactured the shuttle’s rocket boosters, had joined NASA officials in a teleconference about the unusually cold weather forecast for launch.
Their concern involved the O-rings:
rubber seals designed to prevent extremely hot gases from escaping through joints in the rocket boosters.
The engineers feared that the cold would impair the seals’ ability to function properly.
The forecast temperatures were below those covered by their previous flight experience.
Thiokol initially recommended postponing the launch.
NASA managers challenged the evidence supporting that recommendation.
Thiokol paused the teleconference for an internal discussion.
During that discussion, senior executive Jerald Mason asked Robert Lund, the company’s engineering vice president, to “take off his engineering hat and put on his management hat.”
Thiokol’s management subsequently reversed its recommendation and supported proceeding, while engineers continued to object.
Lund’s later testimony before the presidential inquiry revealed a crucial shift.
Normally, their task had been to demonstrate that the hardware was ready to fly.
That evening, they had found themselves trying to prove that it would fail.
They could not prove it conclusively.
The burden of proof had reversed.
Psychologist Ziva Kunda’s work on motivated reasoning offers a useful lens:
a desired conclusion can shape how we seek and evaluate evidence, while preserving our sense of objectivity.
Sociologist Diane Vaughan traced the normalization of deviance at NASA:
anomalies became progressively accepted within established working practices.
Previous flights without catastrophe helped make warning signs seem tolerable.
Together, these perspectives suggest a reinforcing loop:
past outcomes legitimise habits;
habits shape the interpretation of evidence;
that interpretation validates existing practices.
People can help reproduce a risk while experiencing themselves as responsible professionals.
For systemic coaching, this raises a question about how role expectations enter a leader’s judgement:
What outcome do I feel a “good manager” is expected to deliver
and who has defined that expectation?
Exploring this means examining relationships and decision processes:
who can challenge an assumption, whose concerns reach decision-makers, and whether evidence supporting a preferred outcome faces the same scrutiny as evidence against it.
Humanistic management includes preserving our capacity to learn when learning threatens the professional identity through which we have earned recognition.
How free are we to learn when discovering something new could make us appear less competent?
Sources:
NASA — Rogers Commission Report: technical findings and the decision-making process
Ziva Kunda (1990) — The Case for Motivated Reasoning
Diane Vaughan — The Challenger Launch Decision
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