Southwest Airlines had a very bad day, last year. Maybe it's really been a bad few decades for them. Here's 1 article in the New York Times which you might read about it if you haven't already: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/opinion/southwest-airlines-computers.html
As an Agile enthusiast, the matter of software, and the distribution or concentration of decision making rights in one that is relevant to work. I also observe self-defeating generator functions with vast numbers of human beings' behavior in the workplace. It seems that where individual humans perish as a result of organizational dysfunction, we collectively take drastic measures. When nearly unfathomable amounts of money and livelihoods are destroyed, and oceans of customers are inconvenienced, we take no action beyond sheepish shrugs and venting perfunctory complaints. Another great irony is that the main argument I have repeatedly been given for why dictatorships (aka. authority hierarchies) are indispensable to enterprise, is because they're so much faster in making decisions during a crisis. I have the following to say about such claims: 1. The quality of the decisions made by a lone dictator are inferior to those made collectively by everyone effected by or involved with the matter which the decision is relevant to. 2. The speed of disseminating newly minted decisions by dictators is glacially slow in a crisis. 3. There is little or no accountability for the decisions of the dictator. 4. It is next to impossible to distinguish quality of execution on decisions from quality of decision. 5. People don't make their best efforts on carrying out others' decisions. 6. Noise overcomes signal about dictators' decisions, reliably resulting in confusion, despair, and disengagement in the crisis. Authoritarian structure, mechanisms and policy thwarts human intentions everywhere in the human experience, long-term.
1 Comment
Leave a Reply. |