18 June 2026
This post is available in Japanese
Groupthink actually kills people
The implosion of the Titan excursion vessel en route to the wreck of the Titanic on 18 June 2023 was a human tragedy. One enabled by groupthink and lack of safety awareness by the sub’s creators. The tragedy was most likely completely avoidable.
Yet these things happen again and again. Not necessarily in deep sea tourism, but across industries and markets. Thankfully the results are rarely as catastrophic as with the Titan. But many are not far off.
A business neglecting to protect customer data leads to years of untold misery for those affected. Safeguards in autonomous vehicles seem to be an afterthought until accidents happen. Products malfunctioning cause injuries and trigger system failures. Businesses crashing spectacularly and thousands of people losing their jobs due to management mediocrity. And so on.
Too often these instances start with leadership groupthink and the closely linked virus of group-induced arrogance. They are often “justified” by the idiot’s guide to entrepreneurship, aka. “move fast and break things” or some equally unnecessary approach that has a high risk of real-world pain built in yet masterfully hidden.
In the case of the Titan the following points (from reporting by The Guardian on the report filed by The Transportation Safety Board of Canada) point to a lack of professional integrity, business smarts, risk awareness and human care by operator OceanGate’s leadership:
“...inspectors [...] found the company culture exhibited "closed-mindedness, pressures toward uniformity and overestimation of the group's power" - traits that amplified the riskiness of the endeavour.”
"Over the course of OceanGate's operating history [...] employees with expertise in specific areas left the company or were dismissed after [...] expressing differing perspectives from the CEO [...]”
*“...confirmation bias was "affecting OceanGate's decisionmaking and risk management with respect to the structural integrity and lifespan of the Titan pressure hull"”
Sound familiar? If this was management hubris bingo you’d likely have checked off three squares already.
In the case of the Titan and the lives lost, there is no coming back or do-over. With lesser f**k-ups there usually is, even though the pain caused can be substantial socially, individually, financially and reputationally.
There is a way to lessen the risk of calamities. It’s known as smart, considered, human leadership.
What you can do
The place to correct mediocre leadership is wherever you happen to be working. If you identify group think, make sure to address it. Create a workplace where differing opinions are rewarded, even if it’s “only” at team level.
Above all, take comfort in knowing that business leaders who are able to gauge risk also from a human perspective are likely to be successful across a higher number of metrics.
Companies led by loudmouths with the empathy level of damp paper tissue will often be more financially successful as they align only with the € bit of capitalism. Leave them to it. We all have a choice, and risking people’s lives is never worth it.
In memoriam
Hamish Harding
Shahzada Dawood
Suleman Dawood (19 years old)
Paul-Henri Nargeolet
Stockton Rush (the founder of OceanGate)
