Sandberg pushed forward, asking whether Scott’s ums were the result of nervousness. She even suggested that Google could hire a speaking coach to help. Still, Scott brushed off the concern; it didn’t seem like an important issue. “Finally, Sheryl said, ‘You know, Kim, I can tell I’m not really getting through to you. I’m going to have to be clearer here. When you say um every third word, it makes you sound stupid.’” “Now, that got my attention!” Scott says. As a Southerner, doing this seems darned near impossible to me, but it also seems entirely necessary to lead.

“The Atlantic” recently published an article entitled: “The Coming Software Apocalypse” by James Somers. It argues convincingly that humans are failing in our ability to create software systems that deal adequately with the most complex systems (nuclear arsenal, aircraft, radiation therapy dosage machines, etc.). “We used to be able to think through all the things it could do, all the states it could get into,” noted Nancy Leveson. We are now quite beyond that recalling a famous programmer saw: “When I wrote this only God and I could understand what it did; now only God knows.” In this post I would like to try to define a collection of vulnerabilities in thinking which contribute to our difficulty creating software that’s sufficiently robust to be trusted in complex situations.