Everest 1996, does it get said

In May 1996, two of the most experienced expedition leaders in the world guided their teams toward the summit of Everest, and led them into a disaster. As the day unfolded, several people, guides and climbers, noticed the warning signs accumulating: the summit push was starting dangerously late, the route was crowded, and the agreed turnaround time, the hour past which you must head down or die, was quietly slipping. People saw these things. But saying them out loud, contradicting revered leaders whose judgment had summited Everest many times, felt like insubordination, so the doubts largely went unspoken. A storm caught the climbers high on the mountain in the late descent. Eight people died, including both of the celebrated leaders. A group full of skilled, experienced individuals had been collectively blind, not because no one saw the danger, but because what was seen could not be said, and what was said was not heard.

A team can be full of capable, experienced people and still walk into disaster if what individuals notice cannot be safely spoken, especially when it means doubting someone senior. The information needed to avoid the catastrophe on Everest existed, distributed among people who stayed quiet out of deference. This is the quiet failure of expertise-heavy groups everywhere: the problem is less that no one sees the risk than that seeing it and saying it are two different things, and hierarchy silences the second. If you lead, the people below you are watching things you cannot see, and the only question that matters is whether they feel able to tell you, especially when telling you means saying you are wrong.

Rebel Ideas

Matthew Syed, 2019

On how groups go collectively blind, and why the thing that is seen so often goes unsaid.