I wish that the Challenger Space Shuttle never went down and created the concept of the Challenger memo. Because of the Challenger memo, our culture was forever changed. People feel that if there is some little complaint that forms in their head – they are duty-bound to blast the complaint out as loudly as possible in case it “saves the next space shuttle crew”.
As a result, since the Challenger went down there have been literally billions of people who have written critical messages feeling all the while that they were saving the world. Mostly what they really want is the satisfaction that when something goes wrong – they get to point back to their memo written *before* the event happenned.
The problem with this is that events like the Challenger explosion happen very seldom and these memos get written many times per day in many organizations so the losers writing the memos are ready for the next disaster.
But these memos cause far more damage than simply wasting paper or E-Mail in boxes.
What if you were the person who was handed the Challenger memo, and then ignored it, and then the crash happenned, and then the memo writer points out that (a) they were so brilliant that they knew what was going to happen in advance of the event and (b) their idiot boss was handed the memo and ignored it.
So this creates a culture where we can’t just tell the Challenger memo writer to “go back and actually work on the solution rather than just bitching about the problem”. Each person handed the Challenger memo (remember that they almost never come true) must listen intently to the memo and engage in a long and useless disucssion with the memo writer that does not really get closer to the solution (remember the writer is not motivated by fixing the problem – just showing their brilliance in identifying the problem).
The purpose of the long discussion is so that when the one in a million chance hits and the problem actually happens, not only does the memo writer get credit for their brilliance, the boss of the memo writer can claim that there was a long involved discussion about the issue when it came to light and appropriate measures were taken.
Of course this does not apply to really bad things like sexual harassment or abuse or some other really bad thing – these should be brought to light and handle with care by all involved.
I am talking about the run of the mill Challenger memo which takes the form of, “If we switch from 45 pound paper to 40 pound paper, I predict dire consequences.”
I once had a boss named Lew who had a phrase – “Don’t bring me problems – bring me solutions.” He shared this with me years before the Challenger incident.
This “bring me solutions” is the essense of how we break the endless cycle of wirting Challenger memos and then covering the exposed parts of the anatomy which result. All of this chatter drains ones energy and removes people’s focus from the problem at hand and actually makes it more likely that some dire consequence will occur.
The sad thing is that the dire consequence is usually not the one the (hoping to be brilliant) Challenger memo writer predicted. Although perhaps some lucky person elsewhere wrote a challenger memo and can gain some benefit from the tragedy.