The Titan's Fatal Flaw Wasn't Engineering. It Was Groupthink.
The engineers saw it coming. The culture made sure no one could say so. Five lessons on groupthink for leaders who don't want to sink their companies.
The Titan sub was built to visit the most famous warning in history. It died ignoring its own.
In 1912, the Titanic held its speed through an ice field after ignoring a series of iceberg warnings. The unsinkable ship sank.
More than a century later, five people climbed into a submersible to visit the wreck. They met the same end. On June 18, 2023, the Titan sub imploded on its way down, killing everyone aboard, including the CEO who built it.
As AI continues to transform our work and lives, I can’t help but reflect on the paradox. Technology keeps getting better and better, but leadership doesn’t. We keep repeating the same mistakes.
The Titanic captain dismissed the ice warnings. OceanGate’s CEO dismissed the experts. Same groupthink, same destiny. Groupthink is always an accident waiting to happen.
After years of helping leadership teams have the conversations they’ve been avoiding, I learned one thing. The Titan isn’t an outlier. It’s an ordinary pattern at an ex…
