Organizational Success-Handicapping

This week’s blog post marks the second in a new four-part series – Breaking Barriers (In) Real-Time. Each week in May I will be exploring popular examples of emergent issues in business and popular culture. These issues will be analyzed through my Breaking Barriers system of professional development. I hope that the insights gleaned from these everyday examples will provide accessible, constructive support for you as you navigate similar challenges.

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Even if you are not a closet astrophysicist, you have most likely been impacted by the Hubble Space Telescope. Since its launch in 1990, the stunning images of distant stars and galaxies returned by Hubble have shown up in movies, websites and even popular art. A slew of scientific discoveries and affirmations have resulted from the work of this school bus-size instrument. Yesterday the most expensive repair team launched into space to give Hubble “a hug” as one astronaut put it. They are changing out computers, updated hardware and increasing its capacity to deliver even better results. This is the last repair mission and the Hubble will go offline on or around 2014 so that a next generation telescope can get its moment in the sun.

What? One of the most productive instruments NASA has launched will be relegated to the space junk scrap heap while it is still going strong? Okay, major disclaimer here: I am a doctor, but not the kind that is qualified to comment on the science and political inner-game at work here. That being said, in this scenario I see an all-too familiar organizational performance barrier that must be discussed. I call this barrier organizational-success handicapping. I describe this barrier as strategic and operational behavior that creates or attracts obstacles that limit success.

In essence, NASA is abandoning a relatively cheap, productive and reliable first-generation instrument for the promise of something more expensive, hopefully just as productive - and uncertainly reliable – next generation telescope. But why? It is not because the scientific community and the world of amateur star gazers have tired of the breathtaking Hubble pictures. I argue that it is part of a culture that needs such a strong justification for failure (in order to maintain credibility for political and budgetary reasons) that at times they inadvertently induce that failure.

This is similar to the opposite of a sunk-cost fallacy. A sunk-cost fallacy occurs when someone has put so much time, energy and resources into a failing project that they refuse to call it quits – even when they know it will never succeed. On the flip-side, NASA’s barrier of organizational-success handicapping follows a pattern of building road blocks when there are none to be found. This barrier is especially problematic because it creates a nexus of other performance issues and reduces efficiency and capacity for leveraging successes that do occur. For the sake of everyone, let’s hope that there are people working to change the culture so that this form of handicapping does not erode the runaway success of missions like Hubble in the future.