Are Engineers Human?

Are Engineers Human?Enrico Viceconte, Stoà Business School

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 1

Gruppo di lavoroPratiche lavorative e formazione

Arezzo 13-14 ottobreStorie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale

La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 2

The Skills GapProblem

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 3

The Skills GapProblem

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 4

The Skills GapProblem

The World economy (and ecology) needs:•More «engineers»•«Better engineers»• Better «Education & Training» for engineers• More «Creativity» in Education & Training• More «Systems Thinking» in creativity

• More «human factors» in Systems Thinking

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 5

The Skills GapProblem

My experience with«aerospace engineers»

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche”

More «human factors» in Systems Thinking

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 7

The night before….• The night before the Challenger disaster of Jan. 28, 1986, a teleconference took place among

34 people at three locations. The purpose: decide whether to launch the next morning. This was unusual; in the past, launch decisions were discussed at face-face meetings of NASA managers and its contractors.

• Many engineers at Morton Thiokol recommended against launching. NASA managers weren’t happy to hear that, and weren’t persuaded by the data and analysis Thiokol put forward. Some angrily challenged Thiokol’s conclusions. One manager, Larry Mulloy said hotly, “When do you want me to launch, Thiokol, next April?”

• Midway through the teleconference, senior people at Thiokol held an off-line discussion. They came back to the call, said they had re-examined their data, and reversed the engineers’ no-launch recommendation. A NASA manager then asked, “does anybody have anything more to say?” Nobody spoke up. The Challenger was launched the next morning, and the crew perished.

• “With only voice cues, NASA did not have visual data such as facial expressions that might have given them fuller information about just how worried Thiokol engineers were …”

Weick and Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected, p. 168.“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La

creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 8

Why Organizational Learning?• Complicatedness: Containing intricately combined or involved parts.

Where engineers work.• Complexity: Situations that are difficult to understand, have

considerable ambiguity and uncertainty, and often have no “solutions,” only options and tradeoffs• Chaos: Seemingly random events that have an underlying pattern

(which is difficult to discern)• Change: turbulent environments in which the future is difficult to

predict or control

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 9

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) used in NASA after the disasterAn individual’s…1. … source of energy

• (I) Introversion (energized by things) OR• (E) Extroversion (energized by people)

2. … preferred approach to gathering information• (S) Sensing (using information/evidence to draw conclusions) OR• (N) iNtuition (using instinct/hunches to draw conclusions)

3. … preferred approach for making decisions• (T) Thinking (basing decisions on rational thought) OR• (F) Feeling (basing decisions on emotional reaction)

4. … preferred approach to life, work• (J) Judging (task orientation) OR• (P) Perceiving (process orientation)

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 10

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 11

The behavioural Interviews of the best performing engineers were coded in 6 categories:

1. Attitudes and Attributes2. Communication3. Leadership4. Problem Solving and Critical Thinking5. Systems Thinking6. Technical Acumen

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 12

More «human factors» in Systems Thinking

“Storie ed esperienze di cambiamento professionale. La creatività nelle comunità di pratiche” 13

Methodology:Visual thinking

Methodology:After Action Review

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“Over the long run,superior performancedepends onsuperior learning”Peter Senge, leader of the learning organization movement

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be the individual who cannot read and write,but the one who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”Alvin Toffler, Futurist

[email protected]

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