[HN Gopher] The Apollo Syndrome
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The Apollo Syndrome
Author : saikatsg
Score : 114 points
Date : 2023-12-17 06:16 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.teamtechnology.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.teamtechnology.co.uk)
| colordrops wrote:
| Sounds like Apollo Team type 1 had members with insufficiently
| "sharp, analytical minds" without high enough "mental ability",
| otherwise they would have recognized that organizational rules,
| behavior, and culture are very important to a team's success.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| > The Apollo Syndrome
|
| > This page describes 'The Apollo Syndrome', a phenomenon
| discovered by Dr Meredith Belbin where teams of highly capable
| individuals can, collectively, perform badly.
|
| If I try to imagine the Apollo project then I always see a
| group of glasses wearing (of the sixties type), white coat
| scientists and rocket engineers.
|
| In reality the Apollo team counted 400.000 people. (Yes, some
| just made the sandwiches, but still)
|
| My feeling is that The Apollo Syndrome is feeding of the same
| nostalgia.
| Anonbrit wrote:
| Redefining words to make vague insults doesn't actually
| progress discussion, and indeed can be a symptom of the very
| problem we're discussing - I'm better than everyone else and so
| their thoughts don't matter.
|
| Intellectual and emotional skill development are very well
| recognised as two different spectrums these days.
| colordrops wrote:
| Who exactly am I insulting? Regarding redefining words, I
| assume you are referring to the ones in quotes. I am indeed
| criticizing a subset of people that take a very narrow and
| ill-defined measure of intellect and assume everyone fits on
| the same buckets and has the same sort of skills. It's a
| particular deficiency of the corpo-science class that
| incestuously defines their strengths as "intelligence". It's
| the sort of people that haven't matured beyond "book smart".
| neonsunset wrote:
| I had the opportunity to work with people like these.
|
| The sad part is if you are highly disagreeable as well but also
| the only person in the debate that recognizes the importance of
| getting shit done over semantics or minute details, it will cause
| severe burnout.
|
| Don't repeat my mistake and leave early if you see no levers to
| sway the team dynamics.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| "leave early if you see no levers to sway the team dynamics."
|
| When is this not good advice? And how does ergodicity fit into
| the reasoning? (It is attractive advice, but...?)
| jensneuse wrote:
| I was expecting misuse of GraphQL.
| jongjong wrote:
| This seems like a good study. I wonder if the difficulty of the
| 'Apollo team' to coordinate can be boiled down to simply too much
| ego and status-seeking. I imagine that high performers would have
| bigger egos as they invested a lot of effort in getting to where
| they are and this makes them stand their ground more firmly.
|
| I've noticed on some projects with poor leaders and many high-ego
| status-oriented people on the team, that sometimes people reach
| consensus over bad ideas because those ideas represent a kind of
| middle-ground between two large egos... But the middle-ground
| idea might actually be worse than both ideas from which it is
| derived.
|
| I tried hard to avoid this when I was a team lead; the trick I
| used was that I would often raise half-baked ideas and then
| quickly admit if someone put up a counter-argument which showed
| how it was not ideal or just plain wrong.
|
| I was trying to show everyone that coming up with a bad idea
| doesn't make you a fool and it's OK to play around with ideas and
| that what matters is not idea creation, but idea selection.
|
| You need to be really knowledgeable in your field for this
| approach to work though because there will often be someone on
| your team who will try to use any opportunity to make you look
| bad and so you always have to be a few steps ahead.
|
| So sometimes I might present a naive idea intentionally just to
| spark a discussion and get people thinking and forming their own
| ideas but, in fact, I have a much more developed idea in my mind
| about where I think it's going to go; so maybe 90% of the time, I
| look like I'm thinking many steps ahead.
|
| Then maybe 10% of the time, it goes in a completely unexpected
| direction and I genuinely change my mind and people are pleased
| with themselves that they could convince me.
| jjk7 wrote:
| Sounds kinda manipulative.
| therobots927 wrote:
| How exactly is it manipulative?
| dajtxx wrote:
| I do something a bit similar, I'm usually happy to ask the
| dumb questions to spark discussion so other people don't have
| to.
| oldesthacker wrote:
| How new is this insight? The failure of teams of highly capable
| individuals is often due to egocentric silver-haired gorillas in
| the room:
|
| >They spent excessive time in abortive or destructive debate,
| trying to persuade other team members to adopt their own view,
| and demonstrating a flair for spotting weaknesses in others'
| arguments. This led to the discussion equivalent of 'the deadly
| embrace'. They had difficulties in their decision making, with
| little coherence in the decisions reached (several pressing and
| necessary jobs were often omitted). Team members tended to act
| along their own favourite lines without taking account of what
| fellow members were doing, and the team proved difficult to
| manage. In some instances, teams recognised what was happening
| but over compensated - they avoided confrontation, which equally
| led to problems in decision making.
| OhThatGuy wrote:
| As a silver haired person I really appreciate the comment about
| us. It is always nice to generalize an entire group of people
| and stereotype them because of the way they look. Great idea.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Oh no, even we old(er) people are catching 'offence'.
| brabel wrote:
| I understood that to be a reference to actual gorillas:
|
| > They tend to live in troops, with the leader being called a
| silverback.
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla
| oldesthacker wrote:
| Thanks! Of course, the silverbacks! No offense.
| munch117 wrote:
| > How new is this insight?
|
| 1981.
| CipherThrowaway wrote:
| >he reported some unexpectedly poor results
|
| The results are only unexpectedly poor if you assume individual
| ability directly composes into team ability. I think this was a
| common assumption in the 1980s, but I believe that managers
| nowadays will not be surprised by these results.
| munch117 wrote:
| Managers won't be surprised ... if they've read the 1981 book.
|
| I think most people would be surprised to find negative
| correlation between individual ability and team ability, unless
| they've read this book or something like it. Weak correlation,
| perhaps, but outright negative correlation is truly surprising.
| derbOac wrote:
| Maybe although having worked in this type of environment
| relatively recently it seems the expectation persists in some
| places and might even be cultivated.
| wallflower wrote:
| Destin Sandlin from "Smarter Every Day" recently called out this
| 1971 report. I just resubmitted it as it did not get attention it
| may deserve 2 weeks ago.
|
| "What made Apollo a success?"
|
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19720005243/downloads/19...
| gonzo41 wrote:
| The executive summary of that report should have a number of
| dot points that should lead with. Almost unlimited money and a
| workforce of 400K people pulling in the same direction for one
| objective.
|
| Work these days has less money, fewer people and less clear
| direction. Half of all projects are working out what the actual
| job is.
| cubefox wrote:
| Plus NASA has become more risk averse, which makes project
| progress slower and likely ultimately more expensive, at
| least compared to private space companies. However, NASA is
| still far ahead of the other space agencies.
| xavxav wrote:
| Another key factor: NASA has no control over its funding
| (and thus vision) it's at the mercy of congress each year
| which makes planning and financing large projects hard.
| They have projects and designs imposed from above
| regardless of the scientific or engineering benefit.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This doesn't really align with the fact that NASA has had
| far more manned spaceflight accidents after the Apollo
| missions. They are more risk averse, but also have more
| accidents?
| jtc331 wrote:
| Those can be in a deadly spiral.
|
| Risk aversion doesn't actually mean you're good at
| addressing risk; in fact it may keep you from
| implementing changes (change is risky) that address real
| risks.
| jfengel wrote:
| I'm good with NASA being risk averse when it comes to human
| lives. NASA is about exploration, and space isn't going
| anywhere. If it takes us 10 or 20 or 100 extra years it's
| all still space.
|
| Last time NASA rushed it was because of a "war", and even
| then it was really just a vast international tantrum.
| Nobody really "won" the space race. Somebody got a trophy
| and someone got a participation certificate and the world
| went on as before.
|
| I am glad for the research and I would far rather nations
| competed via engineering stunts than blowing each other up.
| Especially when those stunts manage to produce some
| spinoffs and some science... though any science is bound to
| produce both.
| DougEiffel wrote:
| Sorry, I have to politely disagree.
|
| Space exploration could save humanity in so many ways.
| Nevermind the big "what if" discoveries that would impact
| the trajectory of our entire species, we also discover
| valuable science along the way - things that help us in
| our every day life.
|
| More importantly, the country with the most advanced
| space agency by default has the most advanced weapons. A
| hostile nation could pretty easily tow a small asteroid
| toward Earth and wipe our any country they wanted. Rocket
| technology, fuel technology, etc.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but the space race helped to
| collapse the Soviet Union to some degree, didn't it?
|
| Regardless of whether my last point stands, I think space
| is incredibly important to humanity's future.
| Retric wrote:
| You're confusing science fiction with reality here.
| Attacking a country with an asteroid would be an absurdly
| slow process without engines which are already weapons on
| their own. It's like declaring you're going to launch a
| full scale nuclear strike in 6 years and not a moment
| sooner, you spend all these resources which don't help
| you until after you've lost the war.
|
| The space race had little to do with the collapse of the
| Soviet Union, for one thing the timing is off
| significantly. The Soviet union mostly failed due to
| internal issues that were only tangentially related to
| the US. Excess military spending was more a symptom than
| an underlying cause, you can just as easily blame poor
| manufacturing becoming an increasing issue as technology
| advances, a culture of mismanagement etc. Corruption,
| infighting, apathy, ethnic tensions, mismanagement, etc
| all kept compounding until you got societal collapse.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Given that a current task assigned to NASA is manned flight
| to the moon (which was accomplished decades ago) it's more
| likely there is no direction at all. No one really doubts
| it's possible.
|
| It is as if I bought a controlling interest in Honda and told
| them my revolutionary idea for the North American market was
| to introduce a small car with 4 doors to appeal to budget
| conscious buyers.
| brabel wrote:
| Look at any Working Group and see that play out in reality.
| That's why our RFCs are so complex and of generally bad taste.
| Ringz wrote:
| Politics can be a good example of where the Apollo Syndrome might
| manifest, but often won't because there are enough dumb and
| unskilled politicians around.
| nativeit wrote:
| I don't think it's advocating including "dumb and unskilled"
| people in your team, but rather speaking to the external
| dynamics that recognized leaders in a given field tend to carry
| with them--ie, an eagerness to showcase their prior successes
| while claiming to have been largely/solely responsible for
| them, while suppressing the roles played by the contributions
| of others.
|
| There exists a cohort of otherwise very capable individuals (my
| intuition would be that it is comprised of a much larger and
| varied population that would be difficult to identify and
| select for) who are maybe not so driven by glory or personal
| ambition, or who tend to share credit for their accomplishments
| with the people and circumstances that meaningfully shaped the
| outcome, rather than taking victory laps and draw the attention
| to themselves.
|
| There are certainly distinct traits of "leaders" that can be
| critically valuable to a team, whether it's charisma and the
| ability to sell an idea, or organizational skills that
| facilitate the efficient application of resources. The point
| this article seems to be making is that an ideal team will be
| comprised of a relative few "leaders" with most of the members
| being more in line with the aforementioned cohort.
|
| It's essentially just an academic exploration of the old "too
| many cooks in the kitchen" idiom.
| Gupie wrote:
| A highly intelligent jerk is still a jerk. No surprise there.
| mynameisnoone wrote:
| I worked at Meta in a dysfunctional department where this was the
| case. There was an IC8 who refused to engage, was "too important"
| and "too busy", and refused to concede any point, but was quick
| to insert FUD, bikeshed on edge-cases, and shutdown discussion if
| it distracted from them talking about their projects. Total
| asshat. There were also several other strong (asshole)
| personalities on my immediate team who refused to explain
| themselves, refused to listen to others, and refused to consider
| any one else's viewpoint. It was most a competition of who was
| advancing their particular service and their code, while slowing
| everyone else down by refusing to sign-off commits until round-
| after-round of trivial revisions and delay.
| guytv wrote:
| how long did it take you to leave that team?
| DoctorDabadedoo wrote:
| Plot twist: OP was the IC8 and has now been promoted.
| tempodox wrote:
| Somehow, "Douchebag Syndrome" sounds like a much better name
| for this than "Apollo Syndrome".
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > Apollo missions to the Moon, where scientists had to work all
| through the night on many occasions, battling against fatigue.
|
| I have seen articles saying that the Apollo missions were
| absolutely not that. They were 9 to 5 jobs and managers made sure
| it stayed 9 to 5. The idea was that so many things could go wrong
| and they couldn't afford to have exhausted and overworked people
| screwing up.
| bfeist wrote:
| Apollo historian here, it was sometimes round the clock but
| even then most stuck to shifts. Check out Apollo 13 at
| ApolloInRealtime.org. All Mission Control audio is in the app.
| namaria wrote:
| Also, very next sentence shows the claim is not even about
| astronauts, but ground personnel:
|
| > It is based on the (supposed) claim of someone to have
| played a vital role in the success of NASA's Apollo missions
| to the Moon, where scientists had to work all through the
| night on many occasions, battling against fatigue. One person
| claimed a vital role to the whole programme - by making the
| coffee that kept them awake!
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > One person claimed a vital role to the whole programme
|
| The whole programme of 400,000 people. Really? I sort of
| gave up on TFA at that point. It reminds me of some pop-sci
| report of an experiment conducted on 'monkeys' that claimed
| to show some aspect of leadership, where an underling came
| up with a solution. If the monkeys were any sort of chimp,
| the underling would have got a bad beating if it seriously
| undermined an alpha.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Did you really read the TFA? Because that exact sentence
| is used as an example of a _false boast_ where someone
| over-stated their importance, yet your comment appears to
| take it literally. The full paragraph for context:
|
| > The term 'Apollo Syndrome' has also been used to
| describe the condition where someone has an overly
| important view of their role within a team. It is based
| on the (supposed) claim of someone to have played a vital
| role in the success of NASA's Apollo missions to the
| Moon, where scientists had to work all through the night
| on many occasions, battling against fatigue. One person
| claimed a vital role to the whole programme - by making
| the coffee that kept them awake!
| kqr wrote:
| apolloinrealtime is a fantastic resource.
|
| However, it only details the MOCR and some SSRs -- it doesn't
| reveal much about the hundreds of engineers around the
| country that were called in for more confusing problems.
| confd wrote:
| This web page is well done. It is informative and concise. Good
| submission.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| This reminds me of the experiment to get the best chickens for
| laying; every so often they'd get rid of the chickens that didn't
| lay as much and swap in for a new set, continually getting rid of
| the lower X%.
|
| In the end, the overall output was lower because all the "alpha
| layers" spent more time fighting than laying.
|
| As a software dev, I can't count the number of times HR/hiring
| managers go for the 10x people, exclusively, and end up with an
| org that just can't drive in any one direction.
| kqr wrote:
| This does actually remind me of how flight controllers were
| simultaneously selected and trained: the sim team designed
| scenarios that were specifically tailored to exercise some
| controller's weak point, over and over. They were very creative
| in how to exploit controllers' weaknesses.
|
| Some controllers took their simulator failures as serious
| lessons and improved. Others didn't stomach the constant
| failures and dropped out of the programme. I don't know what
| proportion of alpha chicken they got, but from what I can tell,
| the flight controllers were really good at their jobs.
|
| I've always wanted to explore adversarial simulation as a
| training and selection method but I have yet to find an
| occsassion that warrants it.
| jjk7 wrote:
| > "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me ... You can't be
| fooled again"
| bandyaboot wrote:
| That good ole folksy Tennessee/Texas/probably-Tennessee
| wisdom.
| ddalex wrote:
| I actually admire G. W. Bush's speed of thought here...
| most people wouldn't be able to stop before delivering, by
| their own words, a perfectly recorded media bite of "shame
| on me"... that would've been played non stop ever since.
|
| Instead he was able to stop and deliver an iconic line that
| is quoted ever since to make fun of him.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > I actually admire G. W. Bush's speed of thought here...
|
| That's a novel interpretation of the gaffe. So you're
| saying he repaired the expression mid utterance because
| it was better to sound like a bumbler who couldn't
| remember a common expression than to utter "shame on me"
| and have people play it out of context. Maybe? If this
| were the only instance of him mangling an expression, or
| all the other instances could be interpreted as rescuing
| him from a sound bite, this might be more convincing. Try
| these:
|
| > I know how hard it is for you to put food on your
| family.
|
| or
|
| > Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
|
| There are more here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism
| jayd16 wrote:
| I've heard this theory but it's always felt like
| desperate damage control for a simple but obvious error.
| atoav wrote:
| Ideally in most jobs you want people who enjoy getting
| better, even if it means they don't get to shine.
|
| Trying hard and fucking up sucks for everyone, but if I were
| to hire someone I'd rather have someone that can learn from
| their/our mistakes than someone who abandons ship once the
| grass is greener elsewhere.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| I have a friend who researches botany, and it's the same thing
| for plants. If you only grow the "best" corn, you end up
| selecting for corn that slurps all the nutrients away from the
| other corn in the corn field and getting lower total yield. He
| says that we humans should do what natural selection cannot,
| which is to use group selection to pick the corn that is best
| at playing well with others, not just getting ahead
| individually.
| _factor wrote:
| I've always heard this referred to as incestuous amplification.
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