I just finished reading a great book about the crisis that arose from a major mistake made in the 1970’s in the structural design of New York City’s Citibank Tower. In the book “The Great Miscalculation” by Michael Greenburg it is revealed that the structural engineering firm LeMessurier, headed by William LeMessurier. had made a major computational error while designing the structural system for the tower. LeMessurier’s firm failed to consider quartering winds when calculating the wind load onto the tower.
The firm had its headquarters in Boston and a satellite office in New York City. When William LeMessurier became aware of the computational error in the original structural design made in the firm’s main office, and a subsequent error made by his NYC office, he immediately informed Citibank of the potential collapse of their new headquarters building. There are two major business lessons that this 1978 crisis reveals.
First, LeMessurier risked his professional reputation, his career, his legacy and his entire business by coming forward as soon as he discovered the computational errors. He could have blamed his satellite office in NYC for the mistakes, thereby not being accountable or responsible for the errors made by his firm. In addition, he could have said that his engineers were just following the NYC building code which did not call for quartering wind analysis. However, professional ethics obligated LeMessurier, as head of his firm, to take full responsibility for mistakes made by his staff. History has given him a lot of credit for not waiting or shifting blame. This suggests the question that we all should be considering; what obligations, either professional code of ethics based, or product safety based, or general business expectations to the public, beyond our clients or customers should we build into our business’ ethos?
Second, when LeMessurier came forward with the problem, he also presented a plan for the solution to the problem. In other words, he didn’t just dump the potential collapse of their building in the laps of the senior management of Citibank. We are human, we make mistakes. The lesson here is to build Accountability into our business processes. When we make mistakes, we must take ownership of them and develop corrective solutions to the mistakes we make.
Need assistance with identifying the broader obligations of your company, or with building mistake ownership and solution into your organization? Book a complementary consultation with me.