Cost Pressure, schedule pressure and a cowboy mentality can lead to disastrous consequences. Too often management will believe whoever tells them what they want to hear and will punish people who bring bad news.

Workers have this so engrained in their minds that we have to strongly encourage workers to express their concerns and issues.

Three disasters of note in my industry:

Apollo 1

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

We are a nation of gamblers. We take inappropriate risks and sometimes we don’t really want to know the risks we just want to be lucky.

Murphy punishes gamblers, it is only a matter of time.

I think there is a adage “there are old cowboys and bold cowboys but there are no old bold cowboys.”

TEK