The Challenger space shuttle disaster 40 years on: lessons for leadership in business

Brendan Shaw

Source: Wikipedia, NASA, public domain

“The commission concluded that there was a serious flaw in the decision-making process leading up to the launch of Flight 51-L.”

-            Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, June 1986

Today marks the 40^th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

As well as being a tragic accident of history that deserves acknowledgement, it also provides lessons for leaders and organisations about evidence-based decision making, developing an organisational culture that encourages open communication, and the need for a ‘speak up’ attitude in business and management.

Having an organisation where people can feel to speak freely and respectfully is important. In running complex organisations it is important that management lead from the front by encouraging the skilled people who work with them the opportunity to speak freely. This goes hand in hand with building teamwork and getting everyone to recognise that their success hinges on everyone else's success. It’s also important for the organisation to be clear about its long-term goals and to be cognisant of how its short-term actions and behaviours may, or may not, be contributing to those long-term goals.

The Challenger disaster provides a lesson about the pros and cons of decision-making under pressure, organisations being able to withstand internal and external demands, cross-functional collaboration and having an organisational culture that supports all of these. It has become a business school case study about leadership and how organisations make decisions.

What happened to the Challenger space shuttle?

On the morning of 28 January 1986, the space shuttle, Challenger, launched from Cape Canaveral on its 10th mission. Within seconds of launch, unusual smoke could be seen coming out of the shuttle's right booster rocket. Just over a minute after launch, the Challenger suffered a catastrophic failure, experiencing a major rupture of its external fuel tank and the disintegration of the shuttle vehicle itself. The vehicle was destroyed and 7 astronauts on board lost their lives in the accident.

The then US President, Ronald Regan, ordered the creation of a Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle, the Rogers Commission, which investigated the causes of the incident. The Commission found that the immediate technical cause of the disaster was a faulty O-ring seal in one of the Challenger’s booster rockets.

At the time the Challenger was launched at 11.38am on 28 January, the ambient temperature that morning was 2.2 degrees Celsius. However, the temperature around the right booster rocket O‑ring had been estimated to be -13 degrees Celsius at one point the previous evening. At the time Florida, where Cape Canaveral is located, was experiencing record low temperatures. The Commission found that the freezing conditions the previous night meant that this O-ring was not able to effectively seal a key joint in the right booster rocket and cope with the stresses and pressures put on the rocket at the time of launch the next day. In fact, this was the coldest temperature in which a shuttle launch had ever been attempted. The O-ring did not seal properly and shortly after launch allowed extremely highly heated gases to escape from the right booster rocket, leading to flames and a subsequent chain reaction that led to the tragedy.

The Commission also reviewed the broader management and organisation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its shuttle program. It found that while a faulty O-ring was the immediate technical reason for the tragedy, its underlying causes were a range of organisational, management and communication problems within NASA, the US government agency responsible for space missions. NASA was an organisation that was under pressure in the lead-up to the tragedy. It had set itself an overly ambitious shuttle mission program it had not been able to deliver. This program included a launch on the eve of the President's annual State of the Union address. Not listening to experts, ignoring the warning signs in the data, not adopting calm evidence-based decision making, an inability to question itself about its assumptions, and senior leadership under external pressure ignoring the evidence in front of them all contributed to the disaster.

A key finding of the Rogers Commission was that the potential problems with the O-ring seal in the booster rockets were not unknown. Various pieces of evidence and warnings from contractor engineers and technical experts raised the potential risks with the O-ring. More damning was that there were data and evidence from previous shuttle launches available to show that the O-rings did not perform well in low temperatures. There had been previous launches where the O-rings in booster rockets had failed to seal properly, and the data showing this had been collected, reviewed and discussed internally since the 1970s. However, the observations and warnings had not been acted on.

There had even been a meeting the night before the final Challenger launch where engineers with the contractor who manufactured the booster rocket had explicitly warned of a potential failure of the O-ring seal given the freezing conditions and recommended that the launch not proceed the next day. However, these warnings were ultimately ignored and overruled by management at both the contractor and at NASA.

The Commission found that warnings from experts were ignored by NASA and by senior management in contract suppliers. The Commission found that excessive pressure on NASA and its suppliers, coming from an overly ambitious launch program for the shuttle, pressured management to cut corners, loosen safety protocols and increase risk appetites to try to meet the launch timelines.

Lessons in organisational decision making and risk management under pressure

The Challenger space shuttle disaster has become an important case study for organisational decision making and risk management. NASA, a highly complex organisation with many of the world's smartest people in their fields working together, had to make important decisions in an area which by definition involved some level of risk. It, literally, is rocket science. So, there will always be some sort of risk associated with what organisations like NASA do. Human progress doesn’t often happen if people aren’t prepared to take some sorts of calculated risks in groundbreaking activities.

But equally, in modern organisational management and leadership, having good frameworks for decision-making, taking a considered risk-management approach to actions, and having an organisational culture that allows questioning, that allows people to speak up, and allows experts to put their views forward freely is critical.

Michael Peregrine from Forbes magazine has written a good summary of the Challenger disaster. His summary of the findings of the Rogers Commission highlights key lessons for organisations in risk management and decision-making, including:

• Be aware of the risks hiding in plain sight in front of you

• Ensure that different parts of the organisation are communicating with each other and are being made aware of issues they need to know

• Ensure that checks and balances you have in your organisation are actually implemented and used

• Consider whether your decision to increase the acceptable levels of risk are justified, or is something else driving this

• Yielding to internal and external pressures rarely works out

• Having a culture where experts inside the organisation can raise issues and say ‘no’ if there is evidence of bad decisions being made is important

• Having arm’s length monitoring and accountability for risk management and evaluation is important

• A reporting culture, where people in the organisation feel free to report failures and mistakes up the line without being punished is important

• Being able to at least consider changing decisions and changing course when the evidence and experts in your organisation are drawing this to your attention is important, and

• Having a whistleblower culture that allows people to report things safely.

His article is well worth a read.

Ultimately, how your organisation makes decisions in an uncertain environment, perhaps under self-imposed or external pressures is important. Using good decision-making processes, having appropriate risk management processes, and having an organisational culture that supports the organisation’s goals and the people that work in it is critical.

Leadership is key

Of course, leadership – and the type of leadership – in an organisation is critical here. A leadership style that encourages collaboration and communication, leveraging the excellence of the people in your team, and being able to stick your head above the parapet and look at the big picture can be the difference between success or otherwise.

In today’s world, where the complexity of business, government and life is getting greater all the time, this is important. Dealing with issues like climate change, AI, changing geopolitical environments, changing markets, renewable energy transition, national security, social cohesion and economic changes requires organisations that can manage and, indeed, thrive in environments with many unknowns, risks and opportunities.

Today's world needs organisations that can flourish in complex and uncertain environments.

Having organisations where it’s okay to fail is also key. Tolerating failure encourages experimentation, supports people speaking up and trying new things, and provides critical learning opportunities for the future.

Learning the lessons from past mistakes is an important way for organisations to grow, although the lessons have to be recognised and implemented. This is something that NASA was questioned about again following the subsequent Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003. The ensuing inquiry for that tragedy again criticised the organisational culture and internal communication practices in NASA.

To be successful these days, organisations need to be able to manage this complexity to bring out the best in its people, its assets and itself.

Done poorly, organisations will not succeed in their endeavours and, in some cases, can cause a lot of harm.

Done well, organisations can succeed, they can flourish, and society can reach for the stars.

That’s something that we could do more of right now.

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