Harvard Business School

A very painful example of the tragic results when an organization does not learn from its mistakes comes from a case study by the Harvard Business School of NASA.  The study examined the NASA chain of command following the 2003 destruction of the space shuttle Columbia during reentry. At that time, NASA was a very top-down organization. Bringing up problems was a career killer. In fact, many NASA employees felt that they had to prove that there was a problem, before it was safe to even raise questions.

It’s 1986, on the eve of the NASA launch of Challenger. Imagine that we are witness to the frantic last-minute meetings going on, of assembled teams of NASA engineers and NASA decision-makers. The issue: whether or not it’s safe to launch the space shuttle in cold weather. 

We all know too well what happened. This great tragedy should not have happened. Professor Amy Edmonson used the drama of these events to trigger learning in all of us: Teams have lots of complex barriers to good outcomes…and we must learn how to overcome them.