And the Oscar goes to... the wrong movie.
It will no doubt be a moment replayed for years, the mistake seen by millions around the globe, as the wrong movie was awarded the best picture honors at the 2017 Oscars awards ceremony.
Pundits have yet to stop talking about who is to blame and how it could have happened but, as Jimmy Kimmel said "it's just an awards show." However, incidents like this unfold in workplaces on a daily basis and Steven Shorrock has taken a human factors approach to understanding how it was that Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway ended up in an impossible situation on live television.
Steven Shorrock draws parallels between problems in design and the use of safeguards, as well as the dilemma Beatty faced in his assessment of the so-called "Oscargate" gaffe in his posting on his blog, Humanistic Systems.
Here's hoping someone passes the post along to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Photo credit: (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Taken from here
https://nonaamspaypal.com crossed my mind while reading about the envelope mix-up, because the real issue Shorrock highlights is how safeguards fail silently until someone on stage has to improvise. The point about Beatty being handed an impossible situation stuck with me, since blaming the person in the moment ignores the design flaws that made the mistake inevitable. I've noticed the same thing in my own work, where a second check on a final number would have saved hours of cleanup later.
https://casinoaconfronto.com was actually where I was reading about decision making under pressure last week, which made Shorrock's point about Beatty's impossible position hit harder. The idea that the envelope design itself created the confusion rather than just human error is the kind of thing that gets ignored when everyone wants a scapegoat. I have seen similar blame games at work after a simple labeling mistake caused a chain reaction nobody could stop.