Decision-Making

How to Embrace Uncertainty and Leave Room for Doubt

September 7, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The value of sound decision-making is to be mainly sought from embracing uncertainty.

As the Presocratic philosopher Xenophanes proclaimed, “All we have is but a woven web of guesses.”

Physicist Richard Feynman on how doubt informs critical thinking and learning The physicist Richard P. Feynman often talked about how doubt informs critical thinking and learning. In a 1964 lecture on “What Is and What Should Be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society,” published in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999,) Feynman warned,

A scientist is never certain. We all know that. We know that all our statements are approximate statements with different degrees of certainty; that when a statement is made, the question is not whether it is true or false but rather how likely it is to be true or false. … Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

Science produces ignorance, and ignorance produces more science, reminded Feynman in a 1963 lecture on “The Uncertainty of Science” published in The Meaning of It All (1999,)

To solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to permit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right. Otherwise, if you have made up your mind already, you might not solve it.

When the scientist tells you he does not know the answer, he is an ignorant man. When he tells you he has a hunch about how it is going to work, he is uncertain about it. When he is pretty sure of how it is going to work, and he tells you, “This is the way it’s going to work, I’ll bet,” he still is in some doubt. And it is of paramount importance, in order to make progress, that we recognize this ignorance and this doubt. Because we have the doubt, we then propose looking in new directions for new ideas. The rate of the development of science is not the rate at which you make observations alone but, much more important, the rate at which you create new things to test.

The Czechoslovakia-born Israeli American scientist Itzhak Bentov formulated the so-called “Bentov’s Law,” reiterating that science produces ignorance both deliberately and unintentionally. In Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness (1977,) Bentov wrote,

One’s level of ignorance increases exponentially with accumulated knowledge. When one acquires a bit of new information, there are many new questions that are generated by it, and each new piece of information breeds five-ten new questions. These questions pile up at a much faster rate than does accumulated knowledge. Therefore, the more one knows, the greater his level of ignorance.

How to Embrace Uncertainty and Leave Room for Doubt

Idea for Impact: If you can’t tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity, you may as well embrace a fanatical ideology.

Learning the boundaries of your knowledge—the shortcomings, caveats, hedges, and the standard deviations toward everything you think you know—hones decision-making.

In other words, to get to the right answers, you first have to ask the right questions. So the first thing is to ponder about is what questions to ask and how to ask them. What are the things you don’t know, and how can you reach out into these areas that may be new to you to uncover somethings about the world and yourself?

Once you discover the answers, you’ll realize that approximate statements and varying degrees of certainty will require you to think probabilistically. Your inquiry shouldn’t be, “Will I be right, or will I be wrong?” but rather “What is the probability of this scenario versus that, and how does this judgment impact my choices?”

Leave room for doubt, even in your highest conviction ideas. If not, you’ll risk becoming smug and self-satisfied.

The Power of Asking Open-Ended Questions

August 24, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When Bill Gates first met Warren Buffett, Gates was dazzled particularly by how Buffett asked open-ended “big questions”:

I have to admit, when I first met Warren, the fact that he had this framework was a real surprise to me. I met him at a dinner my mother had put together. On my way there, I thought, “Why would I want to meet this guy who picks stocks?” I thought he just used various market-related things—like volume, or how the price had changed over time—to make his decisions. But when we started talking that day, he didn’t ask me about any of those things. Instead he started asking big questions about the fundamentals of our business. “Why can’t IBM do what Microsoft does? Why has Microsoft been so profitable?” That’s when I realized he thought about business in a much more profound way than I’d given him credit for.

The Power of Asking Open-Ended Questions

“What are My Questions?”

Asking great questions is a skill, but doesn’t come as you would expect. One contributing factor is that, with age, education, and experience, we become conditioned to cogitate in very rigid terms. Heuristics and mental shortcuts become deep-seated and instinctual to allow for faster problem-solving and programmed decision-making.

Idea for Impact: Don’t ask the same questions most people ask. The smartest people I know don’t begin with answers; they start by asking, “what are our questions?”

Make inquiries using open-ended questions that can’t be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Effective questions will help you think deeper, generate meaningful explorations, and yield far more interesting insights.

Don’t Live in a World Ruled by Falsehoods

July 17, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” defined the American author Philip K. Dick.

Lying is second nature to us, and under the influence of improbable thinking, even idealism, we’ll hang ourselves if given enough rope. Rebekah Campbell of the New York Times observed,

A study by the University of Massachusetts found that 60 percent of adults could not have a 10-minute conversation without lying at least once. The same study found that 40 percent of people lie on their resumes and a whopping 90 percent of those looking for a date online lie on their profiles.

Most people lie about little things to make them look good. People lie to stave off the consequences of making a mistake, to buy more time or to spare someone’s feelings. Their hearts may be in the right place, but they are still telling lies.

Telling lies is the No. 1 reason entrepreneurs fail. Not because telling lies makes you a bad person but because the act of lying plucks you from the present, preventing you from facing what is really going on in your world. Every time you overreport a metric, underreport a cost, are less than honest with a client or a member of your team, you create a false reality and you start living in it.

Idea for Impact: Stop Living in a World of Illusions

Don't Live in a World Ruled by Falsehoods Live in the world of reality, not in the world of how you perceive reality.

Realistic thinking is grounded in an honest appraisal of all facts and data and conditions in different situations. Realistic thinking affords a clear-headed and conscious thought and behavior.

The great undertaking in life is to discover reality—to be truly honest and transparent with yourself about everything.

The meditation master Kalu Rinpoche wrote in The Dharma: That Illuminates All Beings Impartially Like the Light of the Sun and Moon (1986,)

You live in illusion, and the appearance of things.
There is a reality, but you do not know this.
When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing.
And being nothing, you are everything.
That is all.

How to Clear Your Mental Horizon

June 8, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This anecdote about a reclusive Nobel laureate is scarcely practical advice, but an excellent reminder of the importance of eliminating internal and external distractions.

Peter Higgs is not a fan of modern technology. The British theoretical physicist, 84, is so consumed with work that he has never sent an email, looked at the internet, or used a cellphone. He’s so cut off from modes of modern communication that he didn’t know he’d won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics—for his 1964 paper predicting the Higgs boson, which imbues other particles with mass—until a neighbor congratulated him on the street. “I resent being disturbed in this way,” says Higgs. “Why should people be able to interrupt me like that?” Because they want to keep in touch? “But I don’t want to be in touch,” he laughs. “It’s an intrusion into my way of life, and certainly on principle I don’t feel obliged to accept it.” He doesn’t own a TV, but not because he lacks interest in the outside world. “I don’t regard television as the outside world,” he offers dryly. “I regard it as an artifact.”

And, the Guardian notes that Higgs isn’t interested in being accessible:

Higgs struck upon his [Higgs boson] theory while walking in the Cairngorms one weekend in 1964. An unworldly and donnish academic, he was so immersed in particle physics research that when his first son was born he was miles away in a university library, and so remote from contemporary reality that to this day he owns neither a TV nor mobile phone, and only acquired his first computer on his 80th birthday.

How to Clear The Mental Horizon and Find Your Focus

Make Conditions as Favorable as Possible

Good jobs are overwhelming, and accomplishing important things is really, really hard. As the following anecdotes will illuminate, many of the greatest achievements in life are often accomplished by people who (1) have a particular desire that becomes the foundational building block for everything they do, (2) focus on what they want to achieve, and (3) divest themselves of internal and external distractions.

The physicist and 1965 Nobel laureate Richard Feynman famously invented the falsehood that he’s irresponsible so that he could avoid mundane tasks. He wrote, “I tell everybody. “I don’t do anything.” If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions … “No! I’m irresponsible. … I don’t give a damn about the students!” Of course I give a damn about the students, but I know that somebody else’ll do it! … because I like to do physics, and I want to see if I can still do it. I am selfish, okay? I want to do my physics.”
The American crime writer James Ellroy said, “I’m interested in doing very few things. I don’t have a cell phone. Don’t have a computer. Don’t have a TV set. Don’t go to movies. Don’t read. I ignore the world so I might live obsessively.”
The German filmmaker Werner Herzog once revealed that he has never taken vacation: “I work steadily and methodically, with great focus. There is never anything frantic about how I do my job; I’m no workaholic. A holiday is a necessity for someone whose work is an unchanged daily routine, but for me, everything is constantly fresh and always new. I love what I do, and my life feels like one long vacation.”

Idea for Impact: Find the Focus That’ll Take to Do Your Best

Success is a product of unremitting attention to purpose. Avoid, disconnect, eliminate, automate, delegate, reduce, or minimize mundane concerns and routine affairs that could dissuade you from focusing on what you want to achieve.

Pulling Off the Impossible Under Immense Pressure: Leadership Lessons from Captain Sully

May 25, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

I recently watched Sully (2016,) the overrated Clint Eastwood-directed drama about the US Airways Flight 1549 incident, aka the “Miracle on the Hudson.”

In summary, on 15-Jan-2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (played by Tom Hanks) heroically dead-sticked his Airbus A320 aircraft in New York City’s Hudson River after both the aircraft’s engines failed from a bird strike. He then helped get passengers and crew off uninjured.

Sully centers on Sullenberger’s post-decision dissonance. To spin the real-life six-minute flight and the 24-minute swift rescue into a 96-minute Holyrood extravaganza, the filmmakers devised an antagonist in the form of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators who try hard to blame Sullenberger for the mishap.

Overdramatized Portrayal of the NTSB Investigators

On the screen, the smirking NTSB investigators use flight simulators and computer analysis to second-guess Sullenberger’s lightning-quick decisions. They would have rather he made it to an airport nearby—a possibility that he had instantly judged was not viable given his 40 years of flying experience.

Contrary to Sully‘s portrayal, the NTSB was unequivocal that landing the aircraft on the Hudson was the right call. In his memoir, Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters (2009,) Sullenberger mentions that he was “buoyed by the fact that investigators determined that [first officer] Jeff and I made appropriate choices at every step.”

In the course of the real-life 18-month investigation of Flight 1549, the NTSB did investigate the odds of landing the aircraft in a nearby airport. Exploring all possible flaws that contribute to a crash is part of the NTSB’s charter. The NTSB, like other accident-investigation agencies, concerns itself principally with preventing future accidents. It rarely seeks to assign blame, nor does it make the pilots justify their actions.

Leadership Lessons from Flight 1549 and Chesley Sullenberger

The Complex Leadership Requirements of Flying

Apart from the sensationalized portrayal of the NTSB investigators, Sully misses the opportunity to call attention to the complex leadership requirements of aviation. Flying a civil aircraft is characterized by a high level of standardization and automation, while still placing a strong emphasis on formal qualification and experience.

Today, highly trained pilots have to work with ever more complicated and autonomous technology. The routinization must be weighed up against deliberate action. On Flight 1549, the A320’s much-studied fly-by-wire system allowed the pilots to concentrate on trying to resurrect the engines, starting the auxiliary power unit (APU,) and deciding the flight path in the direction of the Hudson. Airbus’s legendary computer controls will not allow the pilots to override the computer-imposed limits even in an urgent situation. Sullenberger and others have commented that lesser human-machine interaction may perhaps have allowed him a more favorable landing flare and helped him temper the aircraft’s impact with the water.

Aircrews now consist of ad hoc teams working together typically only for a few flights. They build their team quickly and rely on the crew’s collective knowledge and experience to round out the high levels of standardization.

Due to the complex demands for leadership in aircrews, specialized training programs such as Crew Resource Management (CRM) are in place to improve crew communication, situational awareness, and impromptu decision-making. These systems were established to help crews when technical failures and unexpected events disrupt highly procedualized normal operations.

Furthermore, individual and organizational learning from accidents was institutionalized through mandatory reporting of incidents—not only within the airline involved but also across the aviation community.

Leadership Lessons on Acting Under Immense Pressure: The Context of Success

Owing to intuition, experience, and quick coordination, Sullenberger was able to “land” the aircraft on the Hudson within four minutes following the bird strike and have his passengers and crew quickly evacuated onto the aircraft’s wings and onto rafts.

The rapid and highly complex coordination required for this extraordinary achievement was only achievable because of exceptional leadership, exemplary decision-making under stress, and the technical skills of both the cockpit- and cabin-crew.

The pilots were highly experienced—Sullenberger even had experience as a glider pilot. Further contextual factors—the calm weather on that afternoon and the proximity of NY Waterway ferries—helped bring this accident to a good end. All this facilitated the almost immediate rescue of passengers and crew from the rapidly sinking aircraft and the frigid water.

On another note, Sullenberger’s memoir, Highest Duty (2009,) is passable. The most interesting part of the book is the last fourth, where he discusses Flight 1549 and what went through his mind. Interestingly, Sullenberger writes that even after he realized that the plane was in one piece after hitting the water, he worried about the difficulties that still lay ahead. The aircraft was sinking: everyone had to be evacuated quickly. The passengers could survive only for a few minutes in the frigid waters of the Hudson.

The Biggest Disaster and Its Aftermath // Book Summary of Serhii Plokhy’s ‘Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy’

May 11, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

I visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone last year. This 2,600 sq km (1,000 sq mi) region spanning Ukraine and Belarus is the ghastly site of the greatest peacetime nuclear disaster in history. Yes, it’s safe enough to visit—with precautions, of course. [Read travel writer Cameron Hewitt’s worthwhile trip-report.]

Chernobyl is a gripping testimony to the perils of hubris and a poignant monument to the untold misery it imposed upon swathes of people.

To round out my learning from the trip, I recently read Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2019,) Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy’s haunting account of the nuclear disaster.

Abandoned City of Pripyat Near the Chernobyl Facility

An Accident That Was Waiting to Happen

At 1:21 A.M. on 26-April-1987, an experimental safety test at Unit 4 of the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant complex in Chernobyl went dreadfully wrong. The test instigated a power surge. The reactor exploded and burst open, spewing a plume of radioactive elements into the atmosphere.

The discharge amounted to some 400 times more radioactive material than from the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov, who was in charge of the calamitous test, called the ensuing meltdown “a picture worthy of the pen of the great Dante.” Sixty percent of the radioactive fallout came to settle in Belarus. Winds carried radioactive elements all the way to Scandinavia.

Right away, hundreds of firefighters and security forces consigned themselves to stabilize the reactor and stop the fires from spreading to the other reactors. In so doing, they exposed themselves to fatal doses of radiation, spending the rest of their lives grappling with serious health problems.

The world first learned of the accident when abnormal radiation levels were detected at one of Sweden’s nuclear facilities some 52 hours after the accident. It took the Soviet regime three days to acknowledge the meltdown publicly, “There has been an accident at the Chernobyl atomic-electricity station.” Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev addressed the nation 18 days after the accident, “The first time we have encountered in reality such a sinister force of nuclear energy that has escaped control.”

A Soviet Dream Town Then, a Graveyard of Dreams Now

Abandoned Contaminated School In Chernobyl Exclusion Zone The ghost town of Pripyat, a purpose-built workers’ settlement a mile from the nuclear plant, seized my mind’s eye. It was one of the Soviet Union’s most desirable communities, and 50,000 people lived there when the accident happened. Today, it’s a post-apocalyptic time warp—full of all kinds of dilapidated civic structures that once showcased the ideal Soviet lifestyle.

Pripyat was evacuated entirely on the afternoon of the disaster. Left to rot, the town has been completely overtaken by nature. A Ferris wheel—completed two weeks before the explosion, but never used—has become an enduring symbol of the inflictions. So have unforgettable images of deserted houses engulfed by forest, loveable stray dogs in dire need of medical attention, and a day-nursery strewn with workbooks and playthings.

Abandoned Pripyat Amusement Park: Graveyard of Dreams

A Human Tragedy: Disaster, Response, Fallout

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2019) is a masterful retelling of the episode and its aftermath. Author Serhii Plokhy, who leads the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, grew up 500 kilometers south of Chernobyl. He later discovered that his thyroid had been inflamed by radiation.

Plokhy offers deeply sympathetic portrayals of the plant’s managers and engineers, the first-responders who risked their lives to contain the damage, and the civilians in the affected areas of Ukraine and Belarus.

New Safe Containment of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Drawing upon the victims’ first-hand accounts as well as official records made available only after Ukraine’s 2013–14 Euromaidan revolution, Plokhy meticulously reconstructs the making of the tragedy—from the plant’s hasty construction to the assembly of the “New Safe Containment” structure installed in 2019.

The cleanup of the radioactive fallout could continue for decades. Robotic cranes will work in intense radiation and dismantle the internal structures and dispose of radioactive remnants from the reactors. The damage from the disaster may last for centuries—the half-life of the plutonium-239 isotope, one constituent of the explosion, is 24,000 years.

Design Flaws, Not All Operator Errors

Plokhy shows how Chernobyl personified the Soviet system’s socio-economic failings. Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen—an absolute storm of design flaws and human error.

The Chernobyl nuclear plant was hailed as a jewel in the crown of the Soviet Union’s technological achievement and the lynchpin of an ambitious nuclear power program. The RBMK (high power channel-type reactor) was flaunted as more powerful and cheaper than other prevalent nuclear power plant designs.

Inside Chernobyl's Radioactive Ruins - Engulfed by Forest Anatoliy Alexandrov, the principal designer of the RBMK reactor and head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, reportedly claimed that the RBMK was reliable enough to be installed on the Red Square. The communist czars skimped on protective containment structures in a great hurry to commission the Chernobyl reactors.

Commissars at the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, the secretive agency in charge of the Soviet nuclear program, knew all too well of the fatal flaws in the design and the construction of the RBMK reactors. Viktor Briukhanov, the Chernobyl plant’s director, had complained, “God forbid that we suffer any serious mishap—I’m afraid that not only Ukraine but the Union as a whole would not be able to deal with such a disaster.”

Yet, the powers-that-were assumed that clever-enough reactor operators could make up for the design’s shortcomings. Little wonder, then, that the Soviets ultimately attributed the accident to “awkward and silly” mistakes by operators who failed to activate the emergency systems during the safety test.

Memorial to the Victims of the Chernobyl Disaster

The Fallings of the Soviet System’s Internal Workings

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy dwells on Soviet leadership and the ubiquitous disconnects and the vast dysfunctions in the Soviet state’s affairs.

Chernobyl is a metaphor for the failing Soviet system and its reflexive secrecy, central decision-making, and disregard for candor. The KGB worked systematically to minimize news of the disaster’s impact. KGB operatives censored the news of the lethal radioactive dust (calling it “just a harmless steam discharge,”) shepherded the tribunal hearings, and downplayed the political outcomes of the disaster.

Even the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians evacuated from the thirty-kilometer zone weren’t given full details of the tragedy for weeks. In the days following the accident, the Communist Party’s apparatus, well aware of the risks of radiation, did not curtail children’s participation in Kyiv’s May Day celebrations and parades.

Author Plokhy’s most insightful chapters discuss the historic political fallout of the disaster. Moscow downplayed the design flaws in the reactor and made scapegoats of a handful of the plant’s engineers and operators—just three men received 10-year prison sentences in 1987. One of the three, Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov (whom I quoted above referring to Dante,) was granted amnesty after only three years. He died five years later from a heart failure caused by radiation sickness.

Chernobyl’s outstanding narrative feature is the interpretation of the disaster in the framework of the fate of the Soviet Union. Plokhy explains how Chernobyl was a decisive trigger to the unraveling of the Soviet Union. Chernobyl served as an unqualified catalyst for Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (“openness.”) Too, it fanned the flames of the nationalist movements in the soon-to-break-away republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics.

Recommendation: Read This Captivating Account of a Great Human Tragedy

Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2019) is a must-read record of human fallacies and hubris. It’s a poignant narrative of the courage and helplessness of the thousands of firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, military personnel, and the communities who risked their lives to mitigate the aftermath of the disaster, investigate, and “liquidate” the site. On top, Chernobyl is an edifying thesis on how the disaster accelerated the decline and the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future // Books in Brief

May 8, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Five Minds for the Future (2006,) developmental psychologist Howard Gardner argues that succeeding in a rapidly evolving world requires five proficiencies:

The Disciplinary Mind: “Individuals without one or more disciplines will not be able to succeed at any demanding workplace and will be restricted to menial tasks.”
The Synthesizing Mind: “Individuals without synthesizing capabilities will be overwhelmed by information and unable to make judicious decisions about personal or professional matters.”
The Creating Mind: “Individuals without creating capacities will be replaced by computers and will drive away those who have the creative spark.”
The Respectful Mind: “Individuals without respect will not be worthy of respect by others and will poison the workplace and the commons.”
The Ethical Mind: “Individuals without ethics will yield a world devoid of decent workers and responsible citizens: none of us will want to live on that desolate planet.”

Gardner is best known for his work on multiple intelligences—the theory that cast serious doubts about the simplistic concept of a “single” intelligence, measurable by something like IQ. Gardner’s notion that “there is more than one way to learn” has transformed education in the U.S. and around the world.

Recommendation: Speed-read Five Minds for the Future. Written through the lens of a skills-development policymaker, Gardner’s theses and prescriptions aren’t ground-breaking but make for thoughtful reflection. Complement with Gardner’s The Unschooled Mind (1991; summary.)

It’s Probably Not as Bad as You Think: The 20-40-60 Rule

May 5, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The 20-40-60 Rule, believed to be written by humorist Will Rogers for his movie Life Begins at 40 (1935,) states,

When you are 20, you care about what everybody thinks of you.
When you are 40, you don’t care about what people think of you,
and when you are 60, you actually understand that people were too busy thinking about themselves.

In essence, don’t agonize about what other people are thinking about you. They’re perhaps busy worrying over what you’re thinking about them.

The 20-40-60 Rule became popular when venture capitalist Heidi Roizen cited it (incorrectly attributing it to the actress Shirley MacLaine) at a 2014 lecture at Stanford. First Round Capital’s Review has noted,

People have enormous capacity to beat themselves up over the smallest foibles—saying the wrong thing in a meeting, introducing someone using the wrong name. Weeks can be lost, important relationships avoided, productivity wasted, all because we’re afraid others are judging us. “If you find this happening to you, remember, no one is thinking about you as hard as you are thinking about yourself. So don’t let it all worry you so much.”

Idea for Impact: Don’t Beat Yourself Up Over Your Mistakes

Chances are, people around you aren’t nearly as critical of you as you are of yourself. No one’s going to remember or care about your mistakes, and neither should you.

A Superb Example of Crisis Leadership in Action

May 4, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It is in a crisis that leaders show their mettle. The New York Times notes,

The master class on how to respond [to a crisis] belongs to Jacinda Ardern, the 39-year-old prime minister of New Zealand. On March 21, when New Zealand still had only 52 confirmed cases, she told her fellow citizens what guidelines the government would follow in ramping up its response. Her message was clear: “These decisions will place the most significant restrictions on New Zealanders’ movements in modern history. But it is our best chance to slow the virus and to save lives.” And it was compassionate: “Please be strong, be kind and united against Covid-19.”

Leaders Show Their Mettle During a Crisis Our political leaders’ responses to the current COVID-19 crisis are particularly instructive about how leaders should act in a crisis:

Lead from the front. Initiate quick, bold, and responsible action, even when it carries political risk. Don’t be overcome by panic.
Think the crisis through. Weigh your options carefully, and then make the call confidently. Stay focused. Don’t let stress impede your problem-solving capabilities.
Avert an information vacuum. Any gap in the available information will be filled by guesswork and speculation.
Provide an accurate picture of what’s going on. Be transparent and honest right from the beginning. Acknowledging the gravity of the situation and being clear about how you’re going to collectively address the crisis leaves your constituencies with a sense of confidence in your message.
Choose your words carefully. Don’t create a false sense of security. Avoid making throwaway comments that might be misconstrued.
Communicate often. Fine-tune your message. Update your analysis and reaffirm your assurance of support. Keeping everyone in the loop diffuses fears and uncertainties.
Empower employees to be part of the solution. Invite and respond to employees’ feedback and concerns. They’ll need to know they’re being heard.

Idea for Impact: When a crisis hits, constituencies fall back on their leaders for information, answers, confidence, and direction. Set the appropriate tone for the organizational response by being supportive, factual, transparent, open-minded, calm, and decisive.

Five Where Only One is Needed: How Airbus Avoids Single Points of Failure

April 6, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In my case study of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft’s anti-stall mechanism, I examined how relying on data from only one Angle-of-Attack (AoA) sensor caused two accidents and the aircraft’s consequent grounding.

A single point of failure is a system component, which, upon failure, renders the entire system unavailable, dysfunctional, or unreliable. In other words, if a bunch of things relies on one component within your system, and that component breaks, you are counting the time to a catastrophe.

Case Study: How Airbus Builds Multiple Redundancies to Minimize Single Points of Failure

As the Boeing 737 MAX disaster has emphasized, single points of failure in products, services, and processes may spell disaster for organizations that have not adequately identified and mitigated these critical risks. Reducing single points of failure requires a thorough knowledge of the vital systems and processes that an organization relies on to be successful.

How Airbus Avoids Single Points of Failure Since the dawn of flying, reliance on one sensor has been anathema.

The Airbus A380 aircraft, for example, features 100,000 different wires—that’s 470 km of cables weighing some 5700 kg. Airbus’s wiring includes double or triple redundancy to mitigate the risk of single points of failure caused by defect wiring (e.g., corrosion, chafing of isolation or loose contact) or cut wires (e.g., through particles intruding aircraft structure as in case of an engine burst.)

The Airbus fly-by-wire flight control system has quadruplex redundancy i.e., it has five flight control computers where only one computer is needed to fly the aircraft. Consequently, an Airbus aircraft can afford to lose four of these computers and still be flyable. Of the five flight control computers, three are primary computers and two are secondary (backup) computers. The primary and the secondary flight control computers use different processors, are designed and supplied by different vendors, feature different chips from different manufacturers, and have different software systems developed by different teams using different programming languages. All this redundancy reduces the probability of common hardware- and software-errors that could lead to system failure.

Redundancy is Expensive but Indispensable

The multiple redundant flight control computers continuously keep track of each other’s output. If one computer produces deviant results for some reason, the flight control system as a whole excludes the results from that aberrant computer in determining the appropriate actions for the flight controls.

How Airbus Avoids Single Points of Failure: Multiple Redundant Flight Control Computers By replicating critical sensors, computers, and actuators, Airbus provides for a “graceful degradation” state, where essential facilities remain available, allowing the pilot to fly and land the plane. If an Airbus loses all engine power, a ram air turbine can power the aircraft’s most critical systems, allowing the pilot to glide and land the plane (as happened with Air Transat Flight 236.)

Idea for Impact: Build redundancy to prevent system failure from the breakdown of a single component

When you devise a highly reliable system, identify potential single points of failure, and investigate how these risks and failure modes can be mitigated.

For every component of a product or a service you work on, identify single points of failure by asking, “If this component fails, does the rest of the system still work, and, more importantly, does it still do the function it is supposed to do?”

Add redundancy to the system so that failure of any component does not mean failure of the entire system.

If you can’t build redundancy into a system due to some physical or operational complexity, establish frequent inspections and maintenance to keep the system reliable.

Postscript: In people-management, make sure that no one person has sole custody of some critical institutional knowledge, creativity, reputation, or experience that makes him indispensable to the organization’s business continuity and its future performance. If he/she should leave, the organization suffers the loss of that valued standing and expertise. See my article about this notion of key-person dependency risk, the threat posed by an organization, or a team’s over-reliance on one or a few individuals.

Decision-Making

The value of sound decision-making is to be mainly sought from embracing uncertainty.

Idea for Impact: If you can’t tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity, you may as well embrace a fanatical ideology.

Wondering what to read next?

“What are My Questions?”

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Stop Living in a World of Illusions

Wondering what to read next?

Make Conditions as Favorable as Possible

Idea for Impact: Find the Focus That’ll Take to Do Your Best

Wondering what to read next?

Overdramatized Portrayal of the NTSB Investigators

The Complex Leadership Requirements of Flying

Leadership Lessons on Acting Under Immense Pressure: The Context of Success

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An Accident That Was Waiting to Happen

A Soviet Dream Town Then, a Graveyard of Dreams Now

A Human Tragedy: Disaster, Response, Fallout

Design Flaws, Not All Operator Errors

The Fallings of the Soviet System’s Internal Workings

Recommendation: Read This Captivating Account of a Great Human Tragedy

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Idea for Impact: Don’t Beat Yourself Up Over Your Mistakes

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Case Study: How Airbus Builds Multiple Redundancies to Minimize Single Points of Failure

Redundancy is Expensive but Indispensable

Idea for Impact: Build redundancy to prevent system failure from the breakdown of a single component

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