insights from class 1/25/07

While discussing within our People group, we came up with some insights that pertained not only to the Columbia case but other organizations as well.

The first insight we had was that all the people within NASA were like peas that were not in a pod. They were on there own, not helping anyone else. They weren’t working together but instead taking their piece of the pie and that’s it. If they would have communicated a little better and helped each other out, a lot could have been done to help the problems they experienced.

We also discussed out a lot of the people working at NASA were definitely motivated by the carrot or incentive for doing something in their job instead of being motivated by their heart. One example was Ham. Throughout the case it talks about how if they didn’t leave on time then there other important missions would be delayed which would affect her job and other things. All she seemed to care about was staying on schedule so she would be benefited. One part in the case it talks about how if they worked together, there was possibly a chance that they could have sent another ship up there and saved the astronauts on the Columbia. But it would have taken time and money. That would have definitely put them off schedule. So instead, Ham and others insisted that even if there was a problem, nothing could be done about it and so nothing was.

As a group we also decided that the people working at NASA are smart. They went to school and they have an education. The problem comes when all these smart people stay within their own box instead of going outside the box to work together with all the other smart people working at NASA. This again goes along with the idea of only taking their piece of the pie. If they would instead share a piece of their pie with others and in turn get a piece of other people’s pie, they would learn and communicate so much better.