Reading Response 6--Management Matters

Designing an effective new organizational structure to enable an entire safety-critical industry to learn from experience, foresee and prevent accidents and prevent needless deaths was a huge challenge.

                                                      -------Vicente Chapter 7, P 200

Regarding technology design, before I read this chapter, in my mind, I had no very clear idea that “The design of technology and the management of technology aren’t two separate things (p 190). ” I did not realize that they correlate each other as Vicente elaborated in this chapter.

Enlightened by the true stories he showed to us, when I recalled my Olympic experience to respond Vicente’s opinion, what I could say and respond in my mind is Yes! Yes! And Yes! As a supervisor, I once worked at the Arrival and Departures Desk in the Olympic village during the Games time. Apart from supervising the daily issues running by this desk, one of my main responsibilities was to create daily operational reports for the direct manager. Even though there was no unexpected incident, I was still required to create the daily report as usual, including any suggestions, details of solved problems, to make sure information was shared smoothly and everything was on the right track. I indeed remembered how we encountered and solved an urgent issue that a sensitive delegation arriving in Beijing international airport at midnight without providing their final arrival information, so that there were no arranged vehicles by us to deliver them to the Olympic village, which made them detained in the airport for nearly two hours. Unfortunately, the chef of Mission was annoyed by it and complained it to their country’s Embassy in China. Although it was not concerned with the fatal accidents like medical errors or aviation failures mentioned by Vicente, it was something to do with the reputation of this kind of international event, as diplomacy is no small matter. This incident was absolutely reported in the daily report and was well-known widespread in the inner functional departments in Olympic village. “The goal is to find out what’s to blame, not who’s to blame (P 201). ” It did give us a lesson to pay attention to develop our plans with contingencies as well as provide us valuable experience from it. How helpful and useful the daily report is! And how great it is to make a reasonable and usable management design. We could not imagine how many of these similar incidents would occur again in the village if we did not share this lesson with all, and namely, we were not able to count how many of these similar or worse incidents were avoided by this important sharing.  

As Vicente claimed that all the well-tailored design might go down the drain if organizational considerations aren’t also dealt with effectively, organizational decisions, such as information flow, allocation of functions, reward structures and staffing decisions can have a significant impact, not just on a single individual or a single team of individuals, but on all of the individuals in an organization (P 227).

Designing an organizational structure that allows its members to learn from experience, that lays emphasis on the receiving and communication of information that would help prevent errors, is closer to being realized than ever before (P 222). Certainly, there is still a huge challenge to make a satisfying management design in different originations due to various concerns, such as marketing competition, budget, etc. Even the design is already made, implementation issue might lead it to the opposite direction which is out of our expectations. However, we still wish as Vicente wishes that “Tomorrow, like today, we will be human. The remedy is in changing systems of work. The remedy is in design. ” (p 220)