In 1954, a series of BOAC DeHavilland Comet aircraft crashes were attributed by a public inquiry to metal fatigue. The stresses of repeated pressures and landings in the aircraft caused a failure in a window in the plane. The planes broke up in flight when experiencing additional stress such as sudden air turbulence. The discovery of this metal fatigue in planes led to a general improvement in aircraft safety and new testing and maintenance routines to catch fatigue before it became disastrous.
Fatigue is more than tiredness. We all get tired when the effort or the duration is large. Fatigue is an extreme response as a consequence of extended stress. Just as metals fatigue and fail, so can individuals and organisations. Running an always on digital and global organisation in a global pandemic is a test of any individual and any organisations ability to avoid fatigue.
There were multiple BOAC plane crashes because it took time to identify metal fatigue as the cause of why the planes broke up in flight. The fatigue was invisible, hidden in the metal. It took engineers to take the planes apart and test the metal to discover the stresses and the dangerous flaws that were developing. People died in at least 3 more crashes after the first because of the inability to anticipate the cause of crashes and the delay taking preventative action.
Henry Petroski’s book “To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure’ is an examination of bridge failures. Petroski highlights that bridges tend to fail when new designs become standards and slowly are extended beyond their initial design. For example, the famous Tacoma Galloping Bridge collapse occurred when the known risk that a suspension bridge to act as a wing in fast air met unusually high speed winds and a lighter than usual bridge. The new bridge was a longer and therefore less stable than usual. The result was a costly and embarrassing disaster.
This desire to do more, to reach further, to last longer and to push harder, creates new stresses and risks that were beyond the focus of the initial designer. Like the Comet crashes, hidden risks and stresses can lead to new forms of fatigue and failure. Petroski discusses the need to understand competing objectives in designs, bound designs to a lifecycle, to engage in testing and prevention to find hidden flaws and to learn from past failures.
We are asking people to work beyond the bounds of our designs for remote work and working from home. This is no longer an emergency response. We are shifting to a point where our patterns of work are enduring and changing for the longer term as organisations make real estate, technology, organisation and other decisions to lock in to new patterns of work.
As we start to redesign the systems of our work, we need to consider again the new stresses caused and the old stresses that are magnified and exacerbated in these changes. We will need new testing and new preventative measures to ensure that individuals and our organisations don’t move from tired and stressed to catastrophic collapse. This time calls for more than just an employee engagement survey. Organisations, managers and colleagues need to be actively involved in considering what their design choices mean for the future of work in their organisation, when those designs might break, what risks are created and what mitigation is required.
Remote work can mean that stresses and failures are hidden until it is too late for individuals and for organisations. Anticipating these issues, factoring them into the design of work and acting on mitigation is critical to prevent catastrophic disasters. Most important of all given we are dealing with humans and not metal, is that we need to have the forums in which to have safe conversations about the risks, mitigation and signs of fatigue. Unlike silent metal, people can help us spot and address these issues early, if we let them and support them to do so.