Executive Communication, Space Shuttles, & Tragedy
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentry, killing all 7 astronauts aboard. The disaster was caused by a piece of debris that hit the shuttle’s wing just after launch. Despite the debris strike, the shuttle safely reached orbit and NASA and its partners spent the duration of the shuttle’s mission trying to evaluate how serious the damage was.
The damage was very serious. The debris strike had breached the shuttle’s thermal protection system, causing the extreme heat of reentry to irreparably damage the shuttle.
You can read dozens of documents the team investigating the debris strike created and shared while the shuttle was still in orbit, all included in an accident report the government created. The outcome of this team’s work was a very bad decision — the shuttle was tragically cleared for reentry.
As a result, the report is an incredible resource for studying how communication and decision-making fails in organizations. (1)
I’ve spent hours with the investigation report and regularly teach an elective class on the tragedy to alumni of Harrison Metal’s General Management. Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle is my chosen tool for highlighting when and how executive communication breaks down, and how it can be improved.
Minto’s Pyramid Principle asks us to frame all executive communication as:
Situation — the state of affairs;
Complication —what’s making things harder;
Question — the question raised by S and C;
Answer — the answer to Q in pyramid form, answer-first, followed by supporting evidence.
Minto’s work is indispensable in evaluating the NASA documents.
For instance, look at this slide created by NASA partner Boeing while the shuttle was still in orbit . (2) It was designed to explain the results from “Crater”, a mathematical model that the team used for evaluating damage to the shuttle’s protective tiles (part of the thermal protection system):
This slide includes a situation, a complication, and an implied question, but it takes minutes for a talented reader to find them. That’s the opposite of effective executive communication, which ought to lower the barrier to understanding and facilitate great decision-making. A talented executive communicator might rewrite this slide:
SITUATION: We used the available damage evaluation tool, the Crater model, to try to predict the damage from the debris strike. Crater predicts that critical protective elements of the shuttle, the tiles, are damaged from this debris strike.
COMPLICATION: Crater was designed to be conservative because debris strike situations have so many unknown variables. As a result, Crater has historically predicted damage from debris strikes when, in reality, there was no damage.
QUESTION: What should we do now?
From here, the team could offer many answers and support them. They could ask to use a different investigative tool to collect more data, arguing this was necessary because of PDQ. They could assert that Crater should be ignored and the shuttle was safe for reasons XYZ. Regardless of what they recommended, decision-makers would understand what was happening, what the challenge was, and what the recommendation was. As currently written, it’s incredibly difficult to discern what’s objective fact, what’s opinion or recommendation, and what recommended next steps are.
Great executive communication clarifies the situation, complication, question, and recommendation. It refuses to rely on assumptions about the audience’s prior knowledge. It focuses the conversation on “what now?” not “what are you saying?” Improve your executive communication and let your team focus on what matters.
_________________________________
(1) Many people have spent time with the Columbia investigation report and written about it. Especially notable is Yale Professor Edward Tufte’s analaysis of some of NASA’s Powerpoint slides. You can read that analysis in his indispensable monograph on Powerpoint’s failings.
(2) If you’re especially eagle-eyed you might notice the date on this slide is after the Columbia disaster. I believe it represents when the slide was ‘printed’ to PDF — NASA repots explain that this slide was presented on January 23, 2003, about a week prior to reentry.