The pressure to go: the hardest factor to overcome

A retelling of the paper; Mike’s exact words are quoted.

Where the pressure comes from #

If all of the foregoing were not enough, there is one very significant additional factor: the inevitable pressure on us to make the go decision.

This pressure can take many forms and have many sources: an impending deadline, a project that is behind schedule or over budget or below expectations, or simply our own personal ego. But it is almost always present in some form. The result is that we have a strong incentive to make the go decision even when we have some level of doubt about it.

Reinforced the wrong way, both ways #

Beyond that, we have a strengthened tendency to validate the go decision as a good one when the outcome is successful, because now the pressure has been relieved.

Conversely, if we make the no-go decision, the pressure to go next time typically only increases, as we are now farther behind on whatever schedule, budget or other factor created the pressure in the first place.

From the 2018 Gulfstream talk, not the paper.

After a go that succeeds by good fortune

We may be positively reinforced for what was, in the end, a bad decision.

After a good no-go

We are likely to be negatively reinforced, by the increased pressure, for having made the right call.

Either kind of inappropriate reinforcement will harm the quality of our future decisions.

Not immune: February 3, 2015 #

In the paper, an indented aside: material beyond the talk

I have, over time, come to the conclusion that the pressure to go may be the single most difficult factor to overcome in the pursuit of safety. I have observed in my own decision making that I am far from immune to it, despite the extent of the analysis I have done into its potential for negatively impacting the decision making process in relation to safety.

From the 2018 Gulfstream talk, not the paper.

Seven weeks before he was due to present the paper for the first time, at the SETP West Coast Section Symposium in March 2015, Mike launched at sunset in a light wind crossing down the slope, to get the footage that would certify a competition glider in time for the World Championships. The launch failed. He was unhurt; the glider came away with a broken downtube.

I was a lot luckier than I deserved to be.

The full story: Case study · The 2015 certification launch.

Pressure in the Challenger decision #

A summary of the paper’s Challenger passage.

Paper, note 14 William P. Rogers et al., Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (Washington, DC, June 6, 1986), ch. IX, sec. VII, “Flight Rate.”

The Rogers Commission found “a relentless pressure on NASA to increase the flight rate,” and Roger Boisjoly, a structures engineer at Thiokol, testified that he felt management was under a lot of pressure to launch. The paper’s full passage, with both quotations, is on the Challenger case.

Real or perceived, the effect is the same #

In the paper, an indented aside: material beyond the talk

Interestingly, it does not really matter whether pressure is real or merely perceived; it has the same effect. In Moonshot, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton wrote of Skip Chauvin’s decision to decline an engineer’s suggestion to cancel the plugs-out test because of multiple problems:

Paper, note 16 Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, Moonshot (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994), 198.

Time was more important. It was becoming damned critical with all the pressures mounting to get this ship on its way into orbit.

@misc{meier2026pressuretogo,
  author = {Meier, Mike},
  title  = {The Pressure to Go: The Hardest Factor to Overcome},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Edition 1.0},
  url    = {https://meiersafe.com/pressure-to-go/}
}