Summary
Overview
Psychology professor Tessa West examines how miscommunication leads to major failures, using NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter disaster as a case study. She reveals that even highly intelligent teams miss critical information due to hidden languages, unstated assumptions, and communication norms. Through research on team decision-making, she demonstrates that groups consistently fail to share and incorporate unique information, even when motivated to succeed. West offers practical strategies for improving workplace communication by stating the obvious, restating critical information, and normalizing questions about jargon and acronyms.
The Mars Climate Orbiter Disaster: A Communication Failure
On September 23, 1999, NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter mission failed catastrophically when the probe burst into pieces upon hitting Mars's atmosphere. The $125 million failure wasn't due to technical incompetence but rather a fundamental communication breakdown between teams. One team used the metric system (Newtons) while another used imperial units (pounds), creating a 4.4x calculation error. Despite having multiple opportunities to catch the mistake, teams never had the basic conversation to align on their measurement systems.
- The Mars Climate Orbiter was designed to measure weather on Mars and serve as a communication device for the Mars Polar Lander
- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory calculated the flight path using Newtons while Lockheed Martin used pounds, creating a 4.4x error
- Teams never explicitly discussed which unit of force they were using, assuming everyone was on the same page
- The miscalculation was comparable to using a pound versus a kilogram of butter in a recipe
" The entire failure comes down to one thing, failed communication between these team members. And more specifically, the people working on this project were not talking to each other about the right stuff at the right time. It really is that simple. "
" We walk into meetings. You know, if we get lucky, there's that annoying, overly conscientious person who says things like, before we get started, everyone, let's level set and talk about, you know, whether there's ink in the printer or at the newspaper we work or, you know, whatever obvious thing they want to get on the same page with. And we usually roll our eyes at this person. "
Multiple Missed Opportunities to Save the Mission
The Mars mission had built-in redundancies, meaning the initial miscalculation shouldn't have doomed the entire project. People began noticing the flight path was wrong and attempted to raise concerns through meetings and conferences. However, a second critical communication failure occurred when those with vital information were ignored simply because they didn't fill out the proper forms or use the correct communication channels, demonstrating how rigid processes can override critical thinking.
- People started noticing problems and bringing them up in meetings and conferences, with flight paths being recalculable
- Critical information was ignored because individuals didn't fill out the right forms or use proper channels
- When someone made last-ditch phone calls sounding urgent, they weren't taken seriously because they didn't sound anxious enough
- Teams get married to their processes, which become their Achilles heel in important decision-making contexts
" The people holding that critical information were ignored for a very dumb reason that I'm pretty sure everyone in this room can recognize. They did not fill out the right form. "
" We think that critical information will eventually make its way to the important people at the top. But often this is not the case. "
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