An Article in the Huntsville Times titled The breakfast club NASA senior managers never talk about safety in same restaurant twice By Rebbecca Sallee.
A group of managers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has more than one item on its plate when it meets each month to talk about safety over breakfast.
Roger Herdy, a site manager for Allied Aerospace in Marshall's Engineering Science and Technical Services group, said about 20 senior managers take part in the monthly meetings, which started in 1990.
Managers take turns leading a safety briefing and choosing the breakfast site. "The rules are that you cannot go back to the same place," Herdy said. "Over the years, it's been more and more difficult to find a new restaurant. That's part of the game."
I find this very disturbing from the point of view of one who has studied the Psychology of Group Dynamics. This breakfast game ignores the importance of space when dealing with group dynamics, the seriousness of the issue they are dealing with as well as the fact that they are wasting a lot of public employees time playing this game.
The functioning of a group is highly dependent on the space they meet in. There are of course obvious things like lay out, lighting and temperature but there are other factors as well. Meeting in the same space is important for group therapy because it automatically puts participants in the proper frame of mind and means they don't have to think about the room. While a safety group gathers for a different purpose, constantly changing meeting space undercuts the purpose of the meeting and the functioning of the group. I am sure many times they have met in rooms not really conducive to a meeting because of the rules of the game.
The playful attitude is also disturbing to me when dealing with the subject of safety. Written later in the article,
this month with Lon Miller's discussion of "safety as an attitude," Herdy said. "It is a very serious thing when you are in the manned spaceflight business that things are safe. There can be spills, accidents, things of that nature. We want to be sure everybody goes home."
The breakfast club does not seem to have the safety attitude.
Finally, how much time an effort goes in to finding a new restaurant, telling everyone when and where the meeting will be and having 20 people find this month's location. That is not even considering how much extra time is spent on the road because the distance required drive to a new spot because the group has already been to all the nearby ones. Consider this meeting has been going on every month for 15 years. That means they have meet in 180 different places. I who live close to 10 restaurants would be hard pressed to play this type of game for long.
It is time this group get serious and remember the importance of safety and the fact they are all either directly or indirectly being paid by the government and stop wasting tax payer dollars on a silly game.
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