I'M SUPPOSED TO BE ON A PLANE: SYSTEMS SAVVY BREAKDOWN
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4 a.m. alarm, taxi to San Jose Airport at 4:45, 5 a.m. check-in announcement that we're not on the flight leaving to Dallas. "Do you have any documentation?" No, since it was international, the system wouldn't let us check-in in advance. Of course I have the flight number, it's on my phone ----- for a flight out of San Francisco (45 minutes by car for the 6 a.m. flight).
We're so "savvy" that we have Trip-It automatically linked to our Google Calendars, that automatically update our calendars on, let me count them, five different pieces of hardware. We are also so "savvy" that we have basic routines for getting our boarding passes, including being able to use our iPhones to check-in.
All of this fell apart when one piece of our routine was altered: the ability to check-in on-line was blocked since the destination was outside of the U.S. My traveling companion and I know better -- I often reference human decision making in my research and he is a systems design expert. When the routine breaks: you stop, look, and listen -- just like building the system from the start. The literature on human cognition even has a term for what we did. Our reaction fit the third response, Exclusion, to anomalous data in Chinn & Brewer's Psychological Responses to Anomalous Data.
"No change in theory A." While we were correct in excluding the data as irrelevant to our travel plans "we'll just have to check-in at the counter" it should have been a trigger to reevaluate the whole system. No boarding pass -- no opportunity to do my final check of which airport and time (part of my standard routine). There is great value in routines -- organizations exist because of them. But, we also have to have the savvy to know when to reassess the routines that have been serving us so well. True in all sociotechnical systems and classically described in Weick's The Mann Gulch Disaster: The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations.
Good thing punishment is a strong teacher. Given I won't be doing any twilight snorkeling followed by a cool Pina Colada (until tomorrow), I will be more effective in my use of complex routines.
"No change in theory A." While we were correct in excluding the data as irrelevant to our travel plans "we'll just have to check-in at the counter" it should have been a trigger to reevaluate the whole system. No boarding pass -- no opportunity to do my final check of which airport and time (part of my standard routine). There is great value in routines -- organizations exist because of them. But, we also have to have the savvy to know when to reassess the routines that have been serving us so well. True in all sociotechnical systems and classically described in Weick's The Mann Gulch Disaster: The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations.
Good thing punishment is a strong teacher. Given I won't be doing any twilight snorkeling followed by a cool Pina Colada (until tomorrow), I will be more effective in my use of complex routines.
