Does any of this sound familiar?

The other day, David Woods responded to one of my tweets with a link to a talk:

claim of root cause is ex. of component substitution fallacy. All incidents that threaten failure reveal component weaknesses due to finite
resources & tradeoffs -> easy to miss the critical systemic/emergent factors see min 25 https://t.co/OsYy2U8fsA

— David Woods (@ddwoods2) January 16, 2023

I had planned to write a post on the component substitution fallacy that he referenced, but I didn’t even make it to minute 25 of that video before I heard something else that I had to post first, at the 7:54 mark. The context of it is describing the state of NASA as an organization at the time of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident.

And here’s what Woods says in the talk:

Now, does this describe your organization?

Are you in a changing environment under resource pressures and new performance demands?

Are you being pressured to drive down costs, work with shorter, more aggressive schedules?

Are you working with new partners and new relationships where there are new roles coming into play, often as new capabilities come to bear?

Do we see changing skillsets, skill erosion in some areas, new forms of expertise that are needed?

Is there heightened stakeholder interest?

Finally, he asks:

How are you navigating these seas of complexity that NASA confronted?

How are you doing with that?