10 ms·
The Apollo Syndrome
- colordrops 3y agoSounds like Apollo Team type 1 had members with insufficiently "sharp, analytical minds" without high enough "mental ability", otherwise they would have recognized that organizational rules, behavior, and culture are very important to a team's success.
- j-a-a-p 3y ago> The Apollo Syndrome > This page describes 'The Apollo Syndrome', a phenomenon discovered by Dr Meredith Belbin where teams of highly capable individuals can, collectively, perform badly. If I try to imagine the Apollo project then I always see a group of glasses wearing (of the sixties type), white coat scientists and rocket engineers. In reality the Apollo team counted 400.000 people. (Yes, some just made the sandwiches, but still) My feeling is that The Apollo Syndrome is feeding of the same nostalgia.
- Anonbrit 3y agoRedefining words to make vague insults doesn't actually progress discussion, and indeed can be a symptom of the very problem we're discussing - I'm better than everyone else and so their thoughts don't matter. Intellectual and emotional skill development are very well recognised as two different spectrums these days.
- colordrops 3y agoWho exactly am I insulting? Regarding redefining words, I assume you are referring to the ones in quotes. I am indeed criticizing a subset of people that take a very narrow and ill-defined measure of intellect and assume everyone fits on the same buckets and has the same sort of skills. It's a particular deficiency of the corpo-science class that incestuously defines their strengths as "intelligence". It's the sort of people that haven't matured beyond "book smart".
- neonsunset 3y agoI had the opportunity to work with people like these. The sad part is if you are highly disagreeable as well but also the only person in the debate that recognizes the importance of getting shit done over semantics or minute details, it will cause severe burnout. Don't repeat my mistake and leave early if you see no levers to sway the team dynamics.
- thimkerbell 3y ago"leave early if you see no levers to sway the team dynamics." When is this not good advice? And how does ergodicity fit into the reasoning? (It is attractive advice, but...?)
- jensneuse 3y agoI was expecting misuse of GraphQL.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- keyle 3y ago[flagged]
- jongjong 3y agoThis seems like a good study. I wonder if the difficulty of the 'Apollo team' to coordinate can be boiled down to simply too much ego and status-seeking. I imagine that high performers would have bigger egos as they invested a lot of effort in getting to where they are and this makes them stand their ground more firmly. I've noticed on some projects with poor leaders and many high-ego status-oriented people on the team, that sometimes people reach consensus over bad ideas because those ideas represent a kind of middle-ground between two large egos... But the middle-ground idea might actually be worse than both ideas from which it is derived. I tried hard to avoid this when I was a team lead; the trick I used was that I would often raise half-baked ideas and then quickly admit if someone put up a counter-argument which showed how it was not ideal or just plain wrong. I was trying to show everyone that coming up with a bad idea doesn't make you a fool and it's OK to play around with ideas and that what matters is not idea creation, but idea selection. You need to be really knowledgeable in your field for this approach to work though because there will often be someone on your team who will try to use any opportunity to make you look bad and so you always have to be a few steps ahead. So sometimes I might present a naive idea intentionally just to spark a discussion and get people thinking and forming their own ideas but, in fact, I have a much more developed idea in my mind about where I think it's going to go; so maybe 90% of the time, I look like I'm thinking many steps ahead. Then maybe 10% of the time, it goes in a completely unexpected direction and I genuinely change my mind and people are pleased with themselves that they could convince me.
- jjk7 3y agoSounds kinda manipulative.
- therobots927 3y agoHow exactly is it manipulative?
- norir 3y agoThey are intentionally planting a false seed when they really intend to go in another direction. It reminds me of Agamemnon in book 2 of the Illiad: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/iliad/section2/ https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/iliad/section2/. What I find insidious about this kind of behavior is that although they claim that it is to encourage the team to not be shy speculating on new ideas, it seems as though the true purpose is to make the team lead appear smarter that the other team members. It's a kind of reverse psychology. If everyone is throwing out spontaneous ideas, some (probably most) will be bad. Some ideas are very dumb and are easily dismissed. Sometimes however it takes time to work through the subtleties and see the problems. If the leader deliberately seeds a bad idea and then is able to quickly point out some very subtle problem, it makes them look like a genius relative to others who would need more time to see that issue. That is why it seems manipulative to some of us.
- oldesthacker 3y agoHow new is this insight? The failure of teams of highly capable individuals is often due to egocentric silver-haired gorillas in the room: >They spent excessive time in abortive or destructive debate, trying to persuade other team members to adopt their own view, and demonstrating a flair for spotting weaknesses in others' arguments. This led to the discussion equivalent of 'the deadly embrace'. They had difficulties in their decision making, with little coherence in the decisions reached (several pressing and necessary jobs were often omitted). Team members tended to act along their own favourite lines without taking account of what fellow members were doing, and the team proved difficult to manage. In some instances, teams recognised what was happening but over compensated - they avoided confrontation, which equally led to problems in decision making.
- OhThatGuy 3y agoAs a silver haired person I really appreciate the comment about us. It is always nice to generalize an entire group of people and stereotype them because of the way they look. Great idea.
- InCityDreams 3y agoOh no, even we old(er) people are catching 'offence'.
- brabel 3y agoI understood that to be a reference to actual gorillas: > They tend to live in troops, with the leader being called a silverback. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla
- oldesthacker 3y agoThanks! Of course, the silverbacks! No offense.
- munch117 3y ago> How new is this insight? 1981.
- CipherThrowaway 3y ago>he reported some unexpectedly poor results The results are only unexpectedly poor if you assume individual ability directly composes into team ability. I think this was a common assumption in the 1980s, but I believe that managers nowadays will not be surprised by these results.
- munch117 3y agoManagers won't be surprised ... if they've read the 1981 book. I think most people would be surprised to find negative correlation between individual ability and team ability, unless they've read this book or something like it. Weak correlation, perhaps, but outright negative correlation is truly surprising.
- jayd16 3y agoIt's also obvious in sports that star players don't always work well together. If you're a fan, you see the storyline play out often. Teamwork is important.
- KittenInABox 3y agoI don't even manage, I just watch team sports, and I know that you can put together star players and the team just falls apart. Sometimes also, when you cut an underperforming player your star player also spontaneously crashes in performance.
- shiroiuma 3y agoThe same thing happens with rock bands. Sometimes they tried to put together bands called "supergroups" with star musicians from other highly-successful bands, and the results were usually underwhelming. It's probably because many times, one of the "underperforming" musicians does various other important tasks that don't involve technical ability on their instrument. One example here is Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue: he's a competent bassist for that type of music, but definitely no virtuoso, but his big contribution to his band was in songwriting, not bass playing, and his songwriting is arguably one of the big things that made the band so popular and successful in its time. Also, sometimes certain people just work really well together, and one of them may not seem all that great on their own.
- wallflower 3y agoDestin Sandlin from “Smarter Every Day” recently called out this 1971 report. I just resubmitted it as it did not get attention it may deserve 2 weeks ago. “What made Apollo a success?” https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19720005243/downloads/19720005243.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19720005243/downloads/19...
- gonzo41 3y agoThe executive summary of that report should have a number of dot points that should lead with. Almost unlimited money and a workforce of 400K people pulling in the same direction for one objective. Work these days has less money, fewer people and less clear direction. Half of all projects are working out what the actual job is.
- cubefox 3y agoPlus NASA has become more risk averse, which makes project progress slower and likely ultimately more expensive, at least compared to private space companies. However, NASA is still far ahead of the other space agencies.
- xavxav 3y agoAnother key factor: NASA has no control over its funding (and thus vision) it’s at the mercy of congress each year which makes planning and financing large projects hard. They have projects and designs imposed from above regardless of the scientific or engineering benefit.
- brabel 3y agoLook at any Working Group and see that play out in reality. That's why our RFCs are so complex and of generally bad taste.
- confd 3y agoThis web page is well done. It is informative and concise. Good submission.
- Ringz 3y agoPolitics can be a good example of where the Apollo Syndrome might manifest, but often won’t because there are enough dumb and unskilled politicians around.
- nativeit 3y agoI don’t think it’s advocating including “dumb and unskilled” people in your team, but rather speaking to the external dynamics that recognized leaders in a given field tend to carry with them—ie, an eagerness to showcase their prior successes while claiming to have been largely/solely responsible for them, while suppressing the roles played by the contributions of others. There exists a cohort of otherwise very capable individuals (my intuition would be that it is comprised of a much larger and varied population that would be difficult to identify and select for) who are maybe not so driven by glory or personal ambition, or who tend to share credit for their accomplishments with the people and circumstances that meaningfully shaped the outcome, rather than taking victory laps and draw the attention to themselves. There are certainly distinct traits of “leaders” that can be critically valuable to a team, whether it’s charisma and the ability to sell an idea, or organizational skills that facilitate the efficient application of resources. The point this article seems to be making is that an ideal team will be comprised of a relative few “leaders” with most of the members being more in line with the aforementioned cohort. It’s essentially just an academic exploration of the old “too many cooks in the kitchen” idiom.
- Gupie 3y agoA highly intelligent jerk is still a jerk. No surprise there.
- mynameisnoone 3y agoI worked at Meta in a dysfunctional department where this was the case. There was an IC8 who refused to engage, was "too important" and "too busy", and refused to concede any point, but was quick to insert FUD, bikeshed on edge-cases, and shutdown discussion if it distracted from them talking about their projects. Total asshat. There were also several other strong (asshole) personalities on my immediate team who refused to explain themselves, refused to listen to others, and refused to consider any one else's viewpoint. It was most a competition of who was advancing their particular service and their code, while slowing everyone else down by refusing to sign-off commits until round-after-round of trivial revisions and delay.
- guytv 3y agohow long did it take you to leave that team?
- DoctorDabadedoo 3y agoPlot twist: OP was the IC8 and has now been promoted.
- tempodox 3y agoSomehow, “Douchebag Syndrome” sounds like a much better name for this than “Apollo Syndrome”.
- sixothree 3y agoAgreed. I’m not sure Apollo Syndrome describes this situation.
- GuB-42 3y ago> Apollo missions to the Moon, where scientists had to work all through the night on many occasions, battling against fatigue. I have seen articles saying that the Apollo missions were absolutely not that. They were 9 to 5 jobs and managers made sure it stayed 9 to 5. The idea was that so many things could go wrong and they couldn't afford to have exhausted and overworked people screwing up.
- bfeist 3y agoApollo historian here, it was sometimes round the clock but even then most stuck to shifts. Check out Apollo 13 at ApolloInRealtime.org. All Mission Control audio is in the app.
- namaria 3y agoAlso, very next sentence shows the claim is not even about astronauts, but ground personnel: > It is based on the (supposed) claim of someone to have played a vital role in the success of NASA's Apollo missions to the Moon, where scientists had to work all through the night on many occasions, battling against fatigue. One person claimed a vital role to the whole programme - by making the coffee that kept them awake!
- KineticLensman 3y ago> One person claimed a vital role to the whole programme The whole programme of 400,000 people. Really? I sort of gave up on TFA at that point. It reminds me of some pop-sci report of an experiment conducted on 'monkeys' that claimed to show some aspect of leadership, where an underling came up with a solution. If the monkeys were any sort of chimp, the underling would have got a bad beating if it seriously undermined an alpha.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoDid you really read the TFA? Because that exact sentence is used as an example of a false boast where someone over-stated their importance, yet your comment appears to take it literally. The full paragraph for context: > The term 'Apollo Syndrome' has also been used to describe the condition where someone has an overly important view of their role within a team. It is based on the (supposed) claim of someone to have played a vital role in the success of NASA's Apollo missions to the Moon, where scientists had to work all through the night on many occasions, battling against fatigue. One person claimed a vital role to the whole programme - by making the coffee that kept them awake!
- Rationnelfh13 3y ago[flagged]
- michaelcampbell 3y agoThis reminds me of the experiment to get the best chickens for laying; every so often they'd get rid of the chickens that didn't lay as much and swap in for a new set, continually getting rid of the lower X%. In the end, the overall output was lower because all the "alpha layers" spent more time fighting than laying. As a software dev, I can't count the number of times HR/hiring managers go for the 10x people, exclusively, and end up with an org that just can't drive in any one direction.
- kqr 3y agoThis does actually remind me of how flight controllers were simultaneously selected and trained: the sim team designed scenarios that were specifically tailored to exercise some controller's weak point, over and over. They were very creative in how to exploit controllers' weaknesses. Some controllers took their simulator failures as serious lessons and improved. Others didn't stomach the constant failures and dropped out of the programme. I don't know what proportion of alpha chicken they got, but from what I can tell, the flight controllers were really good at their jobs. I've always wanted to explore adversarial simulation as a training and selection method but I have yet to find an occsassion that warrants it.
- jjk7 3y ago> "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me ... You can't be fooled again"
- bandyaboot 3y agoThat good ole folksy Tennessee/Texas/probably-Tennessee wisdom.
- ddalex 3y agoI actually admire G. W. Bush's speed of thought here... most people wouldn't be able to stop before delivering, by their own words, a perfectly recorded media bite of "shame on me"... that would've been played non stop ever since. Instead he was able to stop and deliver an iconic line that is quoted ever since to make fun of him.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- _factor 3y agoI’ve always heard this referred to as incestuous amplification.
- annabyrd 3y agoDouble Apollo. It's so common in the tech world. It also feels like purgatory if you find yourself in one (a project, a team, a company).
- blowski 3y agoThe book "Dreaming in Code" is about a whole company doing this while trying to build Chandler[1]. Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus) hired all the best people he could to build a better calendar/to-do-list/everything kinda software. It failed spectacularly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(software)
- mercutio2 3y agoI don't know if we "failed spectacularly"; Mitch is a fun guy to work for but he didn't really know what he wanted to build, so when he decided it was time to pull the plug, off we went. We certainly had lots of people who wanted to come in to work and write software, and didn't have a ton of ego wrapped up in which direction to march. We just weren't clear on which direction to march.
- blowski 3y agoSounds like you have way more knowledge than I do about what was happening, and what results they got. As best as I can say is that when you look at the people he pulled together, you’d expect the whole world to be on Chandler now, instead of Outlook and Google. Yet there was barely a production release, and it’s been abandoned for more than a decade. I thank them for trying. But it seems like a great example of an “Apollo Team”.
- mercutio2 3y agoMitch was trying to do (at least) three things at once: - make a hackable, open source tool — create a new interaction model for PIM data - be a livable Mail/Calendar client The team assembled would probably have been quite competent at doing any one of those things! It’s not clear to me there was a path to achieving a harmonious combination of all three given any staffing.
- aa-jv 3y agoIsn't this just another form of "Peter Principle"[1] being manifested? i.e. its a case of "We're all very competent at an individual level, but having never worked in a group as individuals, and then being thrust into a group requiring us to discard individual control, makes us all pretty incompetent." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
- varjag 3y agoReading this I once again realize that people management genre is astrology for suits.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoTaking that perspective, some of these books on the subject get funnier - color / personality or Myers-Briggs for example, gotta put the INFJs with the ENFPs else their chakras won't align or... something like that.
- larrydag 3y agoIn the finance and banking world a lot of the larger decisions are done in committees. These committees usually require a majority vote to get things approved. Most of the voting members of the committees are the Execs. You can imagine the political and bureaucratic intertwining of getting things done in these organizations with those types of personalities.
- jl2718 3y agoMark Burnett once warned me about this, saying that it’s been the cause of a lot of his success. In the first Eco Challenge, a team with 4 Navy Seals was beaten by a family that included a 72-year-old grandmother, and he bet everything that he would be able to document this in a real-world setting. There is a wrinkle in this, however, something he doesn’t talk about. The fifth member, though much better than average within the competition, was not a Navy Seal. Mark was a commando himself, and knew what would happen.
- steamer25 3y agoI think one part of the trick is that you find high-functioning people but in less-overlapping domains. In one of the more successful teams I was on back in the day, I was a JavaScript developer and was paired with some Flash developers on a project where we had a lot of back and forth calls crossing the boundary. I'd ask them to implement a way for me to call their logic and then they'd ask me for a way to call my logic. We were both super-responsive to the other because neither side had much interest in imposing our preferences in the other's very distinct domain. On the flip side, we were both quite capable in our own right and thus able to agree on the overall architecture pretty quickly. With some people, you'd probe, "it seems like you should have a way to do X, right?" and they'd respond immediately, "that's definitely not possible, you'll have to work around that". So you'd push, "do you want to check?" but they'd decline so you'd take it upon yourself to dig in and point them to relevant documentation. With these guys, their response to the first question was, "Of course we can do that and you can do Y for us, right?".