Our company had followed a typical pattern: a start-up tech company with a hit product which sold a gazillion copies. Stock price continually rising, making many early employees moderately wealthy. Follow-on product is also a big success and morale is generally very high.

But then, whether through complacency, hubris, or just market competition, we hit a rough patch. The new version of the product takes longer (much longer) than forecast – and when it is released it quickly gains a reputation for bugginess. Sales skid, followed by the stock price, and then morale.

Executive management is in full command-and-control mode. More importantly, the executive responsible for engineering has a bad habit of tearing a new one for anyone who brings him bad news (and there is a lot of it). In some ways, software engineers are no different than anyone else – we’re averse to pain. So naturally, engineering managers become increasingly reluctant to bring up problems hoping they can resolve them before they are discovered or hoping that someone else will report them. This leads to a downward spiral because, while the pain is postponed, when the problems do come to light the chewing out becomes even more vicious.

Finally, the executive realizes he has a serious knowledge problem on his hands and decides to confront it head on. He gathers the entire engineering management team into a large conference room and without preamble tells us that he’s heard people claim we have a “shoot the messenger” culture. “Is this true? Do people really believe this?” he demands.

Of course by now the executive has sealed himself off from reality. Anyone who believed there was a “shoot the messenger” culture was not going to confess to the executive and risk getting shot. He had a classic “collective action problem” on his hands, which the company eventually resolved in dramatic fashion by replacing much of the executive management team in order to usher in a new era – and a new culture. But it’s too little, too late and the company becomes just another chapter in “In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters.”

Collective Action Problem