NASA and It's Contractors: The Challenger Disaster

Roger Boisjoly was a booster rocket engineer at a NASA contractor, Morton Thiokol. Boisjoly blew the whistle both within the company and to NASA regarding the danger of the rubber in the o-rings, which seal the connections in the shuttle’s rockets, being insufficiently elastic in cold weather. Although The Challenger Disaster (2019) is not a documentary, the film’s narrative, which centers on Roger, or "Adam," is oriented to understanding why the Challenger space shuttle exploded after being launched on January 28, 1986. In other words, although some names are different and the conversations are not verbatim in the film, the factors that contributed to the actual explosion are presented. In fact, the film leans too much on technical details before the disaster and legal arguments afterwards without adequate entertaining elements to make the film enjoyable. However, the film's political function in informing a mass market of why part of the government-business system was broken is valuable. In fact, this mission demonstrates that the medium of motion pictures is capable of aiding in social, political, economic, and religious awareness and education, and thus development. 

The full essay is at "The Challenger Disaster."

Eight Good Behaviors of Managers: Googled by Google

In early 2009 at Google, "statisticians . . . embarked on a plan code-named Project Oxygen. The 'people analytics' teams at the company produced what might be called the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers. 'My first reaction was, that’s it?' says Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president . . .  for human resources. 'The starting point was that our best managers have teams that perform better, are retained better, are happier — they do everything better,' Mr. Bock says. 'So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen. The question we then asked was: What if every manager was that good? And then you start saying: Well, what makes them that good? And how do you do it?' He tells the story of one manager whose employees seemed to despise him. He was driving them too hard. They found him bossy, arrogant, political, secretive. They wanted to quit his team. 'He’s brilliant, but he did everything wrong when it came to leading a team,' Mr. Bock recalls. Because of that heavy hand, this manager was denied a promotion he wanted, and was told that his style was the reason. But Google gave him one-on-one coaching — the company has coaches on staff, rather than hiring from the outside. Six months later, team members were grudgingly acknowledging in surveys that the manager had improved." (1)

Analysis:

"What if every manager were good?" sounds a lot like "What is everyone were above average?" I suppose there will always be the proficient and lacking in any profession. Even then, some organizations would be better managed that others. Corporate culture has a bearing on such differences, even among supervisors. For example, more than one American company probably has a culture in which supervisors view training as the way to correct an employee's bad attitude toward customers. This sense of "bad" is different than "bad" as in incompetent, and even in this sense training may not be sufficient.

For instance, once at a grocery store at night I encountered both a cashier and the customer-service person who did not know how to calculate a "rain check." I was stunned that when I pointed out the most basis of mistake, the two people had blank stares. I politely told them I had to go; I had realized that a transaction would not be likely that evening. The next day, I spoke with the "front line" supervisor, who agreed with me that the incompetence had been "off the charts," and yet she said that during a few hours in the evening, that customer-service employee was in charge in the cashier area. The manager could not do anything about it. Clearly, the management of the store was bad in terms of managerial competence. In fact, as past experience at Walmart stores taught me, incompetence can be so bad, so far removed from that which is customary and thus expected, that horrendous incompetence may itself be unethical. Typically, unethical retail conduct is limited to attitude and related bad conduct toward customers. 

To get good managers, including supervisors, we must consider in what sense good. Good-hearted? Good as in having mastered managerial skills?  Good as in having a good style that fits the particular corporate culture? The question of what makes a manager good hinges on what is meant by "good." Of course, all of these senses of good are important, and not even incompetence can necessarily be cured with training. 

In the case of the bossy and arrogant manager at Google, I contend that what was "bad" was not limited to or sourced in his style; rather, the problem was his personality, which transcends style. Arrogance, for example, is a basic attitude rather than a style. It is no surprise that "coaching" (a misnomer or bad analogy outside of sports) did not turn the guy around. Perhaps the guy needed therapy or counseling. That Google would reduce a "bad" personality to a leadership style and prescribe "coaching" rather than a therapist is no accident.

It is commonly taught in business schools and believed in business settings that the science of management is applicable for virtually any business in any industry. In fact, one can theoretically manage a "team" (another misnomer from sports being used out of context) without having any skill or knowledge particular to the product.  The idea, in short, is that anything --and virtually anyone (certainly anyone who has been hired!) be managed by being (re-)trained. Just as it is assumed that a person with a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) can manage organizations in virtually any industry (i.e., without necessarily knowing much about the product coming in or even well into the job of managing), having a bad (in any sense) employee re-trained is often the default route. 

It is often assumed, for instance, that training and even re-training can be efficacious with anyone. From my observations of the cashier and the supervisor on duty in the grocery store, I would hope that the store manager would consider that some people, even hired ones!, may not be educated or intelligent enough to comprehend and apply the re-training. It is as if managers conveniently assume that their company's hiring process is so good that training should be all that is necessary for any employee. Alternatively, a short-sighted mentality, especially concerning money, may be behind the view of training as a cure-all, for to fire and re-hire is, or should be, a considerable process. 

So, what is actually a psychological problem is thus transmuted into managerial terms such as "style" in need of "coaching." Personality, in other words, is reduced to the extent to which it fits within management. Moreover, reducing managing to behaviors, as if that which is inside the manager is a black box, is to ignore that which separates the mice from the men as managers in terms of getting along with others (i.e., "good" as interpersonal relations), not having a trivial or short-sighted lack of perspective. Improving a manager's "style" by trying to change (manipulate?) her behavior is apt to be insufficient. It is like paddling a row boat without moving the anchor; the boat isn't going to move very far. The anchor must move too, and, well, there are limits to what management, and especially retraining, can do in that respect. Often time in badly managed businesses, the hiring process is flawed such that bad (in any sense) people get in, whether as managers, supervisors or employees.

With this in mind, I turn now to critique the "Eight Good Behaviors" that the good people at Google recommend.

• Be a good coach. Included: provide specific feedback without being too negative and "present" solutions to problems. But isn't this just management?  I don't see much substance in the term transferred from sports(i.e., what coaches actually do).
• Empower your team and don't micromanage. Freedom vs. advice. Challenge the "team" with "big" problems. This sounds like something written by a "team" of school teachers to their young students. Empower is a faddish politically-correct term that is rarely adequately defined. With regard to micromanaging, every micro-manager I have encountered has had control issues--meaning psychological problems involving or impacting personality and interpersonal conduct (not rooted in conduct, or style!).
• Express interest in team members' success and personal well-being. Get to know about their lives outside of work and make new team members feel welcome. Helping new people to feel welcome is laudable; it is perhaps the area where a manager can truly be most human. Success, however, is a vague term implying an ending (e.g., Did you succeed in getting the kids to sleep last night?), whereas business typically is ongoing and thus not like a race or contest after which contestants can know if they won. Furthermore, when used more broadly than in regard to a specific project or plan, success is too vague. With regard to getting to know things about subordinates outside of work, including their personal well-being, some subordinates may feel pressured to say more than they would like, given the power differential. Also, the "authentic" questions may come with a hidden agenda--namely, to manipulate the subordinates so they will want to stay at the company and be more productive. 
• Don't be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented.  Focus on the "team" setting achievement goals and priorities.  We are back to elementary-school language (e.g., sissy) and to what is essentially management itself (producing results, not visions). A business is a results-oriented enterprise.  A focus "on what employees want the team to achieve" belies a manager's true intention to set goals for his or her subordinates so they will pay more attention to results and thus be more productive. Having "the team" set its own goals and priorities can itself be understood as a motivating tool as long as the goals and priorities are approved by the manager. The patina of democracy or decentralized decision-making is often a manipulative sham designed to get more production.
• Be a good communicator and listen to the team. Two-way communication. "Hold all-hands meetings and be straightforward" in communicating . . . Encourage open dialogue and listen." All-hands? At any rate, should we really be encouraging managers to have more meetings?  Being straightforward is laudable, however, as is open dialogue. The question is perhaps whether this is even possible where managers view their subordinates as lower. In other words, can there be straightforward dialogue where there is a power relation between boss and employee?
• Help your employees with career development. Here too, the difficult matter of being able to be straightforward is relevant, given how organizational politics (i.e. collusion or friendship) and a manager's own career interests can all too easily relate to others' career development, possibly resulting in problems for the friend or ally once he or she has been elevated to more difficult tasks.
• Have a clear vision and strategy for the firm even in the midst of turmoil. Involve the team in setting the vision.  Grouping together strategy and vision ignores the vital distinction between management and leadership. My dissertation presents a model by which integrity (i.e., ethical principles) can moderate between the interests of strategic management and leadership vision. The latter is not the same as long-term strategy; rather, vision is an ideal, for which strategy is a means to. The leadership vision of large companies like Google includes the company's place or role at a societal level, such that the vision extends to the societal level. Hence the vision is set at the top, typically by the CEO and perhaps even the chairman of the board, so the notion that a "team" lower down sets the vision is simply wrong; it is a consequence of obfuscating management and leadership, an epidemic in American business. It also follows that vision is not the same as long-term strategic goals; this conflation is also a result of fusing management and leadership. Strategic leadership has two main components, which are distinct. In fact, they can be in tension. Reconciling a credible societal vision with pressing strategic interests can be difficult because upholding the integrity of a vision can involve short- and medium-term costs that are at odds with budgets ensuing from corporate strategy. Google's grouping of vision and strategy ignores this tension. Just in using the term "vision," Google is using yet another vague analogy that has been a fad since the 1980's. How does a vision differ from coming up with a goal? Has anyone in the study of leadership defined vision?  Regarding faddish words used as weak analogies, people can use them without knowing what they mean! Lastly, the use of the word turmoil, as if it were only occasional rather than the typical condition of the business environment, over-dramatizes the need for someone at the helm. Even a turbulent business environment pales in comparison with havoc in and following the protests in the Middle East and the Japanese earthquake in 2011. Lest it be assumed that turmoil has increased over the decades, plenty of oil refiners and producers were going out of business amid the destructive competition of the 1860's. This was Rockefeller's rationale for creating a refining monopoly--a justification he used to act in contradiction to even his own vision of himself as a Christian "helping" competitors from going under. Turbulence can be used an excuse.
• Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team. Work side by side with your subordinates when and understand the work they are doing. This principle, or "habit," challenges the notion that a person can learn management skills and apply them to virtually any business--knowledge of how to make the particular product being unnecessary.  I suspect this is an American view of management. The Japanese have traditionally hired managers from the factory floor precisely because they are familiar with the technical skills being used to make the particular products. Even so, Japan has not been without cases of horrendously incompetent management. A good manager, I contend, is one who is already proficient with most of the tasks of his or her subordinates and can therefore help out when needed.  So it would appear that Google got one right.

1. Adam Bryant, "Google's Quest to Build a Better Boss," The New York Times, March 12, 2011.

Johnson’s “Reinvention” of JC Penney: Too Much and Too Little

In April 2013, JC Penney’s board wished the CEO, Ron Johnson, “the best in his future endeavors.” His effort to “reinvent” the company had been “very close to a disaster,” according to the largest shareholder, William Ackman. During Johnson’s time at the company as its CEO, shares fell more than fifty percent. In February 2013, Johnson admitted to having made “big mistakes” in the turnaround. For one thing, he did not test-market the changes in product-line and pricing-points. The latter in particular drove away enough customers for the company’s sales to decline by 25 percent. Why did Johnson fail so miserably?

Ron Johnson's short tenure as CEO of JC Penney was disastrous, according to Altman.   Source: Reuters

Some commentators on CNBC claimed that JC Penney’s board directors should have known better than hire someone from Apple to have so much responsibility right off the bat in a department store. However, Johnson had been V.P. for merchandising at Target before going over to Apple. Therefore, Penney’s board cannot be accused of ignoring the substantive differences between sectors. Even so, Target and Walmart are oriented to one market-segment, whereas JC Penney, Kohls and Macys are oriented to another. Perhaps had he taken the time to have market tests done at JC Penney, any error in applying what he had learned at Target could have been made transparent.
Although as the former CEO Ullman who would be replacing Johnson pointed out, customer tastes are always changing so you can’t go back to worked in the past, to “reinvent” a company goes too far in the other direction. For one thing, it is risky for a retail company to shift from one market-segment to another, given the company's image. Additionally, to “reinvent” something is to start from scratch to come up with something totally new. Even if that were possible for a retail chain, the “new front” would likely seem fake to existing customers. “They are trying to be something they are not,” such customers might say. Put another way, Ron Johnson might have gotten carried away.
In an interview just after Johnson’s hiring at JC Penney had been announced in June 2011, he said, “In the U.S., the department store has a chance to regain its status as the leader in style, the leader in excitement. It will be a period of true innovation for this company.” A department store is exciting? Was he serious? Perhaps his excitement got the better of him in his zeal for change. Were the changes really of “true innovation?” Adding Martha Stewart kitchen product-lines was hardly innovative—nor was getting rid of clearance sales and renovating store designs and the company logo.
Renovation generally-speaking is rather superficial, designed perhaps to give customers an impression of more change than s actually the case. Is a given renovation an offshoot of marketing or strategy? Ron Johnson may have been prone to exaggeration, as evinced by his appropriation of faddish jargon, while coming up short in terms of substantive change. In an old company trying to be something it's not (i.e., going from a promotional to a specialty pricing strategy), too much superficial change can easily outweigh too little real change. Sometimes even upper-level managers can get carried away with their own jargon in trying to make their respective companies something they are not. It is like a person trying to be someone he or she is not. In "reinventing" JC Penney, Ron Johnson was trying to make an old woman come off as young by applying make-up and new clothes.

Sources:

Stephanie Clifford, “J.C. Penney Ousts Chief of 17 Months,” The New York Times, April 9, 2013.

Joann Lublin and Dana Mattioli, “Penney CEO Out, Old Boss Back In,” The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2013.

The Franchise: An Inherently Flawed Arrangement

The franchise arrangement combines the reach (and efficiency) of central advertising with the ability to respond to local differences. I suspect that the benefit from local flexibility is typically overdrawn, such that the value of the franchise arrangement itself is overstated. Meanwhile, the downside in local autonomy is, I suspect, understated. That downside includes the propensity to engage unethically based in part on lack of character-virtues and on the accurate perception of weak accountability within the franchise arrangement. The downside also comes into greater play than perhaps is realized because management on the local level can be rather bad in quality (from a managerial standpoint). In other words, slim pickings with regard to managerial talent can be a factor at the local level. Without mechanisms of accountability from “higher up,” front-line managers can get away with an astonishing amount of bad (and unethical) managing.

For example, I stopped into a Papa John’s franchise on a weekday mid-afternoon in 2011 to buy a slice of pizza. The employee told me that during mid-afternoons, he offers two for one slice at the regular price. So I bought two-for-one. The slices were terrible—the cheese almost non-existent. The next day, I happened to be passing the same establishment and thought I would see if the pizza was any better. I told the same employee that I wanted the same two-for-one. “I’m not doing that today,” he replied. “The pizza is fresher.” So apparently the two-for-one at the regular price was a matter of employee discretion, rather than being something a customer could count on. I was astonished because his manager was standing next to him. As I was saying that I would pass on ordering anything, the manager suggested I order cheese-sticks instead. I just looked at him. He was utterly indifferent as to whether his employee had misled me; that manager was in a position of authority sans accountability or responsibility. I suspect that this is a common pattern in franchise businesses because the franchise agreement is too weak to hold franchisees accountable.

I have experienced local managers of Best Western, Motel 6, and Days Inns motels going back on their word, only for the corporations’ respective “customer service” employees to tell me that the managers at franchise properties can do whatever they want. In one such case, I later learned that the local police department had had so many complaints from customers about the local Days Inn manager that the chief had called the corporation only to be told that the buck stops with the local manager! The Days Inn corporation could do nothing about the franchisee's manager. 
At the very least, a conflict of interest is exploited in turning over a complaint against a manager to the manager himself, yet the franchise arrangement is not strong enough to obviate the conflict of interest. Accountability regarding unethical local managers simply does not exist in cases in which the franchisee owner simply looks the other way. I suspect that the squalid managers even know when they can get away with cheating customers for short-term financial gain. Meanwhile, the customers have little recourse, even if they call the corporation's "customer service" number.

We can perhaps generalize further to say that the managerial skill (and ethical conduct) at the local-franchise level is typically insufficient, given the looseness in the franchise-arrangement’s mechanism of accountability on the local managers and employees (and even franchise owners). That is to say, the franchise arrangement itself is flawed because it does not permit mechanisms that are sufficient to correct bad and unethical local managers—or at the very least to give those winners the sense that there could be such accountability exerted on them. 

In fact, the franchise arrangement is flawed even apart from local managerial ethical decadence and sheer incompetence. For example, particular Subway franchises do not honor the specials advertised by Subway. In fact, next to the Papa John’s franchise location that I walked away from in 2011, a Subway franchise was selling subs, only without the month’s specials, which were being advertised on television. Here, the problem is not managerial ineptitude or unethical conduct; rather, the fault lies in the franchise agreement itself, wherein individual franchisees can opt-out of particular advertised-specials. This loophole enables the possibility wherein a customer drives to a subway expecting to be able to purchase a special only to 1) be informed that there is no special there and 2) go home empty-handed. A potential customer in that situation would not be wrong in feeling misled even if it is not technically false-advertising (given the ads’ fine print). Franchisees should be required to honor and fulfill anything promised in the corporation’s advertisements. Otherwise, the arrangement itself is inherently unfair to customers, and thus inherently faulty. Again, the structure of the arrangement is found wanting and should be tightened, both for reasons of effectiveness and ethics. 

The weakness inherent in the franchise arrangement can be grasped by situating it along a spectrum running from a confederal alliance to (modern) federal government. I contend that the franchise arrangement is too close to the confederal arrangement in the case of managerial and employee accountability. Whereas the polity members of a confederation hold all of the sovereignty in the confederal system, both the members and the government at the federal level are semi-sovereign in modern federalism. Also, whereas the confederal level can only reach its member polities, a federal government can reach the individuals inside the member polities. A federal government thus has more authority to hold citizens accountable even within their respective states (state governments do too). Where a state government looks the other way on racial violence, the FBI can step in and arrest the KKK individuals. In a confederation, this would not be possible; the state government alone reaches the citizens, and the authority at the confederal level is typically very limited and subject to support from all or a supermajority of the polities in the confederation. 

The franchise arrangement evinces “dual-sovereignty” by analogy because the contract gives the franchisees autonomy to run their businesses as they see fit while subjecting them to specific requirements (e.g., products, signage, furnishings) that represent the “unity.” However, even though it is technically “modern federalism,” the arrangement resembles a confederation as regards managerial and employee accountability. That is, the requirements do not typically include managerial standards and accountability mechanisms; these are left to the “state governments,” the franchisees themselves.  As long as they adhere to the specific requirements, such as in what must be shown in the stores, franchisee owners are largely autonomous in terms of how they have their businesses managed internally, or “domestically.” If there is a violation of one of the specific requirements in the franchise agreement, the corporation treats the franchisee business as a unit and holds the franchisee-owner to account. In this sense, the arrangement functions like a confederation. I submit that local management (and staffing) is typically not sufficiently capable (and forthright) to justify this. 
Therefore, to remedy the problem, an additional transfer of “sovereignty” to the corporation should be made such that a “check” or accountability mechanism can exist at the corporate level and reach directly to the franchisee’s managers and employees, even without respect to the franchisee-owner. By analogy, the FBI can arrest individuals at a KKK rally without checking with the governor of the particular state. Otherwise, inept or unethical franchisee owners will be able to cover for their hires. Indeed, “bad” employees may simply be doing an owner’s dirty work.

In conclusion, effective and ethical management does not extend as far locally as we, the general public, tend to assume (particularly in the food and hotel/motel industries). Corporations utilizing the franchise legal arrangement should strengthen their ability, in the legal documents, to hold local managers (and their employees) accountable. Customers would appreciate an employee in customer service actually going to bat for us, rather than giving us the quotidian “apology” only to say they can’t actually do anything about the problem because the buck stops with the local managers on X. We should not have to accept bad or dishonest business practitioners simply because they are numerous and the franchise arrangement itself is inadequate. Furthermore, just because certain customers can indeed be quite rude does not mean that holding managers and employees accountable for going back on their word is somehow excessive because serving the public is difficult. I suspect that American consumers in particular put up with much more crap at the retail level than necessary. In other words, the business of America could be done a lot better, yet for some reason we tend to assume that the status quo is unavoidable. We may even have convinced ourselves that efficiency justifies “a few bad apples.” Business itself would benefit were accountability mechanisms strengthened, and you and I would not suffer so many fools holding leverage over us on account of their positions. We need not be utterly frustrated with a dishonest, “my way or the highway” rigid and self-centered manager or employee. Life is too. So we do not have to accept the franchise arrangement in our business system and society simply because franchising is convenient to corporations. I contend that the arrangement only seems to be in their financial and strategic interests. The corporate executives are overstating the quality and honesty of their franchisee-owners and their hires. Sadly, uprooting even a putrid tree can be an exercise in futility if the sordid roots are deep and entrenched with vested interests.