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When a deficit in leadership leads to a compromise on values
Date : 29/04/2024
(This article has been reposted with minor revisions from the author's blog. Access Part 1 and Part 3)
It is understandable that our business leaders keep biting their nails trying to beat the competition. But when they chase business goals by compromising on their core values, they eventually get caught in a regulatory web and start losing customers. Their brand image takes a serious hit.
Consider the following instances.
The 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster
For a space exploration agency of the stature of NASA, revenues and profit were not the motives, but it appears that deviations were indeed made from standard safety protocols because the top leadership put a higher premium on expediency. The now infamous O-ring pressure seals, supplied by a Utah-based contractor, served as the cause of the crash.
The O-rings had been tested to perform in 40-degree Fahrenheit or above weather conditions. On that fateful morning in Florida in 1986, it was only 18 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA knew it was an issue, but a few hours before the launch it pressed the contractor to ‘green light’ the launch. Robert Ebeling, heading a team of the concerned contractor’s employees experienced with the O-rings, debated whether they could knowingly approve that the O-rings would not fail.
In the end, the team wanted NASA to wait until the afternoon when temperatures would be closer to 53 degrees Fahrenheit. Due to the pressure exerted by NASA — in addition to the wilting of the contractor’s senior managers — the company reversed its original decision and ended up giving the go-ahead for launch.
Alas, Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven members on board.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 fiasco
In 2016, Apple was set to launch the iPhone 7. Samsung leaders rushed into bringing Galaxy Note 7 into the market before Apple. Here also, market forces determined the behaviour of the company’s management. In a rush to beat the competition, a design flaw in the battery was overlooked. Safety standards were apparently compromised.
Within weeks of the launch, the phones started catching fire. A recall ensued with over 2.5 million phones sent back to Samsung. The company lost billions of dollars in the recall, let alone billions more in lost revenues.
The Boeing 737 Max issue
In October 2018, Indonesia’s Lion Air flight plummeted to the ground shortly after taking off, killing all 189 people on board. Subsequently, in March 2019, a crash happened in an eerily similar manner in Ethiopia, killing all 157 persons aboard.
Boeing claims to work on such ‘enduring values’ as integrity and safety. The company defines integrity as taking ‘the high road by practicing the highest ethical standards.’ Likewise, safety is captured thus: ‘We value human life and well-being above all else and take action accordingly,’ the company suggests, and that ‘by committing to safety first, we advance our goals for quality, cost, and schedule.’
But to match the launch of A320neo by Airbus, said to be 15% more fuel efficient, Boeing moved fast and launched the 737 MAX nine months after Airbus’s announcement. Regulatory approvals were apparently rushed through, by simply declaring the 737 MAX to be merely a ‘derivative’ model of the company’s cash cow – 737. Technical changes of a material kind were apparently made, but the need for pilot training was never highlighted. The Flight Crew Operating Manual was not modified to reflect the changes. If this had been done, perhaps the pilots might have been in a better position to know what to do should the plane begin to behave unpredictably after take-off due to bad sensor data.
According to a recent Reuter’s report, a Joint Authorities Technical Review done in 2019 had harshly criticized the US Federal Aviation Administration’s review of a safety system on Boeing‘s 737 Max jet that was later tied to two crashes that killed 346 persons.
However, as of now, the plane has once again been certified by the USA authorities as being fit to fly.
The common thread running through all these instances is the leadership deficit these organizations faced at the time. When values become mere words on a company’s website, disaster just lurks around the corner. As technology advances, the human angle can only be ignored at the risk of a great cost to the organization as also to the society at large.
Of revenue-hungry businesses and governments
World over, history has repeatedly taught us that when it comes to the Rajasic world of commerce, truth is a casualty. Cigarette and liquor manufacturers contribute to the exchequer and also keep their own stakeholders happy. Pharmaceutical companies keep peddling drugs which may have serious side effects on hapless patients. After holding up cholesterol as the main villain for cardiac problems for a very long time, suddenly we find that medical research comes up with results which are contrary to the original stand.
A recent example is that of the mad rush to bring in 5-G which rides on a much stronger dose of radiation. In a research paper published in 2018, Martin L. Pall, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences, Washington State University, USA, has summed up the grave side effects of non-thermal microwave frequency electromagnetic fields on Homo sapiens. These range from attacks on our nervous systems, our hormonal balances and our DNA to cancer and lower male and female fertility levels (Source: peaceinspace.blogs.com 17 May 2018).
Nowhere does one notice a reasoned debate on the incalculable costs of imminent health degradation which the coming generations are bound to face owing to sustained exposure to high doses of radiation.
The risk of data privacy
As businesses and governments go in for higher levels of digitization, lay citizens who avail of products and services end up living in more transparent fish bowls. Individuals cease to matter. Somewhere in a data repository, they become mere numbers, coded by a binary system and mercilessly crunched into big data; data which is eagerly lapped up by the corporate world.
One who loves undergoing a Virtual Reality experiment is shocked to find that he and even his family members are denied an insurance policy because the body reactions detected during the said experiment indicate that he is likely to be suffering from dementia, a disease which runs in families. One who books a B&B apartment has to not only substantiate his true identity as a living person but also establish that his past legal record is as pure as fresh driven snow. Personal interactions with a customer have ceased to matter in most digital transactions.
Hapless customers and citizens are no longer kings and queens; they are jacks of all trades who master none, let alone themselves or their own thought processes.
Political parties have already perfected the art of using Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics to shape public opinion en masse. There are no bad politicos and good politicos. Scratch the surface and one would find that underneath they are all the same. In many countries, democracy is touted as a virtue, but just beneath its soft velvety cover can be discerned the cloven hoof of dictatorial tendencies.
Caveat emptor (or, buyer beware) is the only way forward!
Can the Bhagavad Gita help a professional to face the challenges posed by Industrial Revolution 4.0 in an effective manner? We address this question in the next instalment of this series of posts.
(Inputs from an IT expert and an aviation expert are gratefully acknowledged.)
Picture credits: Dyu - Ha on Unsplash
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