Chapter 11 - Learning to Drop Familiar Tools
The First Book: Range by David Epstein
David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters, and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.
Who should read this?
All books have a thesis they attempt to answer, and Range's subtitle gives away the thesis right on the cover!
Why generalists succeed in a specialized world?
If the quote," jack of all trades, master of none." resonates with you, this book will fascinate you. Or if you are a curious person might berate themselves having too many interests. The book is about being broadly curious to solve problems more effectively.
You can get an offline PDF version of the blueprint to support our work here!
Chapter 11 - Learning to Drop Familiar Tools
Carter Racing
The chapter opens with us sitting on the sidelines of a discussion with Harvard Business students on the Carter Racing case study. The students are debating whether or not they should pull from the race. The race will take place on the coldest day of the season at 40F. The students have been given a plot of six data points with the number of failures in head gaskets at different temperatures. The group comes to a split consensus with 4 to 3 on continuing to race.
The next day the professor asks all the groups what the decisions they made and why. The professor then asks how many times he let the students know if they needed more information.
Four times.
The group even wished they had information on the temperature when there were no failures but thought it did not exist. The professor reveals the complete data set. A trend is immediately visible, racing below 65 F and the gasket had a total of 6 failures. In contrast, the gasket failed 3 of 20 times above 65 F. The professor informs the students that there is a 99.4 percent probability of engine failure at 40 degrees.
The take-home punch here is the same data as the launch of the space shuttle Challenger.
"Like all of you, nobody [at NASA or Thiokol] asked for the seventeen data points for which there had been no problems," he explains. "Obviously that data existed, and they were having a discussion like we had. If I was in your situation I would probably say, 'But in a classroom the teacher typically gives us material we're supposed to have.' But it's often the case in group meetings where the person who made the PowerPoint slides puts data in front of you, and we often just use the data people put in front of us. I would argue we don't do a good job of saying, 'Is this the data that we want to make the decision we need to make?'" Epstein, David. Range (p. 240).
There's one more curveball here that kicks the chapter off. Again, the failure was in quantitative analysis but relying on it too much.
Inconclusive Data
David provides a new graph that is almost as ambiguous as the first graph, only plotting the failures. But this time, instead, there are only two failures, one at 53F and the other at 75F. The remaining data points show all successful launches. Truly inconclusive. The Thiokol engineers had data to support their reason to postpone launch but were not quantitative. This is truly an example of a wicked problem, as outlined in chapter 2.
In Boisjoly's opinion, the reason the 53-degree launch looked so much worse was that cool conditions had hardened the O-rings and made them slow to expand and seal at ignition. He was right, but he did not have the data to prove it. "I was asked to quantify my concerns, and I said I couldn't," Boisjoly later testified. "I had no data to quantify it, but I did say I knew that it was away from goodness."
Thiokol would advise setting the launch temperature limit to 53 degrees. However, NASA manager Larry Mulloy wouldn't accept the shuttle should have already been cleared to launch between 31 and 99 degrees and now changing this limit so late in the launch cycle without data to prove it was acceptable.
NASA, the agency that hung a framed quote in the Mission Evaluation Room: "In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data." But in this case, the need for conclusive data cost us the space shuttle Challenger and lives on board. The failure here posited by the author is that NASA managers failed to drop their familiar tools. Let's explore why.
Young Men and Fire
Enter Karl Wieck, a psychologist, and organizational behavior expert. He noticed something unusual in the deaths of smokejumpers and "hotshot" wilderness firefighters. They held on to their tools, even when ditching equipment would have allowed them to run away from an advancing fire. The question is, why? To most of us, this seems like an obvious decision when it comes to life or death. First-hand accounts from firefighters can be found in Norman Maclean's book Young Men and Fire.
Weick found similar behavior in other trained professionals from navy seaman, fighter pilots, and even high wirer perform Karl Wallenda. But, according to Weick, there was something bigger at play here.
"Dropping one's tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility. It is the very unwillingness of people to drop their tools that turns some of these dramas into tragedies." Karl Weick Range (pp. 246-247)
They behave like hedgehogs, as discussed in chapter 10. The firefighters cling to their tools in emergencies in the starkest example because it's part of their group membership. Also, fittingly, it's the very job they are meant to handle.
In the same way, NASA held on to its trusted procedures in an unprecedented situation. Rather than being able to set them aside momentarily. But there seems to be a fine line between congruence or culture fit and bucking the status quo. So you can see how waiting for perfect safety could backfire for long-term trust in the agency in the space business. The question then turns to this: what makes the best leaders in any organization?
From a study of 334 higher education institutions, it seemed that the most effective leaders were paradoxical. Depending on the situation, they could be demanding and nurturing, orderly and entrepreneurial, even hierarchical and individualistic. However, it seems that leaders best able to tolerate ambiguity had the most impact. This was a similar trait found in the super forecasters of chapter 10.
Monday Notes
Wernher von Braun was able to balance the ridge culture of NASA with an informal, individualistic cross-talk by instituting "Monday Notes." Von Braun asked his team to send him a one-page note each Monday summarizing the past week's activities, and he would write comments in the margins and provide them to each member after reviewing. In 1974, William Lucas took over and changed this practice purely into vertical communication. However, Lucas didn't provide feedback and didn't circulate them to the team. He was even going so far as to become a standardized form to fill out.
NASA's culture at the time emphasized the chain of command and going by rules and procedures. Unfortunately, this had the unintended consequence of lower-ranking engineers having concerns they could not qualify, so they erred on staying silent.
This chapter ends with a broader discussion on working in a complex environment. One key to success is setting an example of a learning culture that allows for dissenting opinions from anyone at any time. Especially as a CEO or group leader, you have to be willing to see your organization from different levels. The complexity of your business is not only from one lens. The specialists of the world only see a few pieces of the problem they aim to solve. When you take your specialized lens and apply it from a new vantage point, all of a sudden, you get new insights. I'll close with the quote from Arnold Toynbee, "No tool is omnicompetent. There is no such thing as a master-key that will unlock all doors."
Additional sources:
Patil, S. V., Tetlock, P. E., and Mellers, B. A. (2017) Accountability Systems and Group Norms: Balancing the Risks of Mindless Conformity and Reckless Deviation J. Behav. Dec. Making, 30: 282– 303. doi: 10.1002/bdm.1933.
Watch the Netflix Documentary: Challenger: The Final Flight (Rotten Tomatoes - Challenger: The Final Flight)
