On January 28, 1986, seven astronauts in the space shuttle Challenger took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Included among them was Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher who had won a national contest to become the first teacher in space. The launch was widely hyped to schools; every schoolchild in America was watching the brave teacher fly out of Earth’s orbit.
Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, the O-ring seals in the solid rocket booster (SRB) failed, and the shuttle broke apart. The Challenger plunged back to Earth, killing everyone aboard.
Even decades later, the tragedy is heartbreaking, especially since it was eminently preventable. Engineers at Morton Thiokol, which manufactured the SRB, knew that the O-rings could fail catastrophically. They knew that the cold January weather increased the danger. And they tried to communicate their concerns to their managers and NASA. But the flight took off anyway.
Senior Engineer Tries to Sound the Alarm
One of the strongest voices to warn about the O-ring problem was a senior engineer named R.M. Boisjoly. On July 31, 1985, six months before the Challenger launch, Boisjoly wrote a memo to R.K. Lund, the vice-president of engineering at Morton Thiokol. In the memo, Boisjoly clearly states that the O-ring problem could lead to a catastrophic loss of life. However, this statement shows up in the middle of the memo, not at the point of maximum impact, which is at the beginning.
The Challenger launch decision was complex and deeply rooted in NASA’s culture. Boisjoly’s memo was the opening salvo in the struggle that lasted until the moment the shuttle took off.
How Did the Warning Memo Start?
For this Writamin, I want to focus on Boisjoly’s subject line and opening sentence to see if he might have had more impact. Here’s what he wrote:
SUBJECT: SRM O-Ring Erosion/Potential Failure Criticality
This letter is written to insure that management is fully aware of the seriousness of the current O-ring erosion problem in the SRM joints from an engineering standpoint.
Did the Subject Line Capture the Urgency?
Boisjoly wrote about criticality; he did not lead with its consequences. “Failure criticality” sounds serious, but it is abstract. It lacks urgency. It doesn’t communicate that the “criticality” might cause people to die. It focuses on a fact, not on a consequence of the fact. OK, the reader might think, so there’s criticality. What is the consequence of the criticality? The reader of the memo was an engineer, so he knew intellectually. But perhaps it did not affect him enough to make him fight with NASA. What might have gotten his attention more powerfully? Perhaps
O-Ring ErosionThreatens Survival of Astronauts
O-Ring Erosion Threatens Success of Mission
Immediate Danger Posed by O-Ring Erosion
Subject lines such as these move the focus off of the fact and emphasize the consequences of the fact. Would they have been more likely to spark his reader’s interest? By focusing on what would happen because of the criticality, Boisjoly might have been more persuasive.
What about his opening line?
It starts in the passive voice: “This letter is written… ” Perhaps he could have led with the active voice:
“This letter highlights the threat to SRM joints caused by the current O-ring erosion problem.”
And what if he had pointed out the consequences of the consequences? That is, what would happen to the mission if the problem with the SRM joint was not fixed? He could have written
“This letter highlights the threat to mission survival caused by the O-ring erosion problem.”
Or perhaps he could have avoided referring to “this letter.” Then he could have written,
“Our current O-ring erosion problem may threaten mission survival.” Or even:
“Our current O-ring erosion problem threatens astronaut survival.”
In the memo, Boisjoly was following the unspoken writing rule of big organizations: Don’t be too direct. Perhaps he succeeded in convincing the VP of Engineering that the O-rings were a problem. But the consequences of the problem never penetrated the minds of the people who mattered: the executives at NASA. This was a failure of communication.
Multiple books have been written to dissect what went wrong. Of course, an engineering problem caused the spacecraft to crash. But a communication problem caused it to launch. In the end, the words that the engineers used simply did not persuade NASA executives to delay the launch.
We know that many Morton Thiokol managers agreed with Boisjoly and were browbeaten by NASA executives until they consented to the launch. But we can imagine that if stronger language — language focusing on the results of the O-Ring problem — had appeared at the beginning of the process, the path to the decision might have been different.
What Can We Learn?
Most of us do not write about life-and-death decisions. We write about the events and ideas that affect our organizations’ success and productivity. We write about things that matter to us. How can we be more persuasive to our readers? By presenting the impact of the details along with the details themselves.
When you write your subject lines and openings, consider the impact you intend to produce in your reader. Focus on the consequences of heeding or not heeding your message. Use clear, forceful language. Perhaps you can prevent a disaster.
©2020 Elizabeth Danziger All rights reserved
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