I just finished "The Undoing Project" - about Kahneman and Tversky. It covers quite a lot of territory, but the title is about mentally 'Undoing' disasters. Ge

I just finished "The Undoing Project" - about Kahneman and Tversky. It covers quite a lot of territory, but the title is about mentally 'Undoing' disasters. Generally speaking, people pick a proximate human action or inaction as the keystone for preventing the problem. In the book, they give the example of going back in time to kill Hitler - but people often don't decide to go back in time to buy Adolf's art - and then one of them suggests that even something as small as another sperm or no sperm 'winning' that particular race would disrupt history just as well. It is much more satisfying to think about killing Hitler than it is to think about throwing a rock at his parent's window. --- It is much more satisfying to think about NASA administrators taking the warnings seriously than it is to think about all the ways the culture and incentives were messed up. You can see a particular decision that was WRONG. Finding fault with a person is a shortcut to mental satisfaction, but it will only at best fix one problem, and at worst will find the person who 'rolled the dice' wrong, or who picked the wrong lottery numbers. That is, you can find a person who was standing next to the cause of the problem, but any other person in that same spot would have the same odds of causing the same problem. --- I've also been thinking about learning organizations - any org that wants to accomplish really big things has to be able to learn. I'd love to hear of any personal experience of contracts that allow for learning. I think it's possible, but usually discouraged because contracts are written defensively, and learning involves a great deal of trust. Its very clear in this case that NASA culture was deeply cynical and brittle. As a government organization they felt they could not show any failure or waste, and this must certainly have wormed into their group and personal psychology. In contrast, SpaceX has demonstrated what a learning organization looks like - it looks like public failure. I emphasize IT LOOKS LIKE public failure. Learning means not being embarrassed about test rockets blowing up spectacularly. It means that you collect your data and improve, and try again. To be sure, this would not work as well (or at all?) with a publicly traded company, and it certainly would not work with a government organization.