![]() While raising one child provides experience, it doesn’t guarantee success in raising another. However, once you’ve figured out how to send one rocket to the moon, the process can be repeated and perfected.Ĭomplex problems are like raising a child. Coordination and timing are critical to success. Unanticipated setbacks go with the territory. But when we pay attention to where our weaknesses are and then pay attention to how something like a checklist works to supplement the failings of our brains and the difficulties teams have in making things come together, what you realize is that an idea like this can be transformative.”Ĭomplicated problems are like sending a spaceship to the moon. As we turn to something like a checklist, what we see is something that is lowly, humble, overlooked and I think misunderstood. But with groups of people who can work together and take advantage of multiple brains preparing and being disciplined, we can do great and ambitious things. “Under conditions of complexity, our brains are not enough,” said Atul Gawande during a recent lecture series. There’s a recipe and sometimes a few basic techniques to learn, but once these are mastered, following the recipe results in a high probability of success. Simple problems, they suggest, are like baking a cake. In Gawande’s book, he references the work of two professors in this field, Brenda Zimmerman of York University and Sholom Glouberman of the University of Toronto, who have come up with a three-tier classification system for the different kinds of problems we face in the world: simple, complicated and complex. It’s a story about coping with complexity and a graphic illustration of how technological advancement and the complexity it often creates brings with it what Atul Gawande describes in his book, The Checklist Manifesto, as “entirely new ways to fail.”īelieve it or not, complexity is a science all on its own. The story doesn’t end there, but first let me explain my reason for recounting it here and why it has relevance to all of us today - nearly 80 years after the event. Of visitors use checklists for maintenance work at their plant.Īs a result, the Boeing aircraft was deemed “too much airplane for one man to fly.” The army declared Douglas’ competing design the winner, and Boeing nearly went bankrupt. While doing all this, the test pilot had forgotten to release a mechanism that locked the elevator and rudder controls. This new plane required the pilot to manage four engines, each with its own air-fuel mix, retractable landing gear, wing flaps, electric trim tabs, variable-pitch propellers and many other bells and whistles. The Model 299 was significantly more complex than any previous aircraft. The crash had been caused by pilot error. The subsequent investigation revealed there was no mechanical fault with the aircraft. The Model 299 test plane exploded in a fireball when it smashed into the ground, killing two of the five crew members, including the pilot. The small group of spectators watched in horror as the plane suddenly stalled and dropped out of the sky. The airplane took off effortlessly and climbed steeply to 300 feet. It could carry five times as many bombs as the army had specified and fly faster with twice the range of previous bombers.Īt the allotted place and time, a small crowd of army brass and manufacturer representatives watched as the Model 299 test plane taxied onto the runway. The competition was regarded as a mere formality because Boeing’s Model 299 was the logical choice. ![]() ![]() Army Air Corps held a “fly-off” between two aircraft vying to win the contract for the military’s next long-range bomber. ![]()
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