Where Loyalty Should Stop

Managers should try to instill loyalty among the ranks of their employees. The team members should be loyal to their companies and their customers. However, it is important to realize that intense loyalty invites single-mindedness. When single-mindedness drowns out calls for caution or the pointing out that mistakes may be made, will often be made. The gravity of past success was largely attributable to the space shuttle Challenger's disaster. The systematic downgrading of technical problems and aggregating of mistaken assumptions that were reinforced with every successful shuttle mission led the seven astronauts to their doom.Waiving launch constraints had become routine at NASA, and every dodged bullet reinforced NASA's false confidence.