Nut Island effect
Encyclopedia
The Nut Island effect describes a human resources
condition in which a team of skilled employees becomes isolated from distracted top manager
s resulting in a catastrophic loss of the ability of the team to perform an important mission. The term was coined by Paul F. Levy
, a former Massachusetts
state official, in an article in the Harvard Business Review
published in 2001. The article outlines a situation which resulted in massive pollution
of Boston Harbor
, and proposes that the name of the facility involved be applied to similar situations in other business enterprises. The work is used as a source in human resources management case studies and is featured on the websites of several business management consulting
firms and health care
institutions.
(MWRA) from 1987 to 1992 before writing "The Nut Island Effect: When Good Teams Go Wrong", which describes conditions at the authority’s Nut Island sewage treatment
facility in Quincy, Massachusetts
over a three decade period ending in the plant’s closure in 1997. The article uses the history of the facility to illustrate a five-step process that defines a business scenario that progressively leads to management-employee alienation, employee self-regulation of critical processes and finally catastrophic mission failure. In summary, the steps are:
Nut Island is a small roughly 5 acre (0.0202343 km²) former island in Boston Harbor that was joined by landfill to the Hough's Neck peninsula in northeastern Quincy
by the 1940s for use as the site of a sewage treatment facility. The operation of sewage treatment and disposal facilities in populous eastern Massachusetts was the responsibility of an independent state agency known as the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC). The commission, also responsible for the construction and maintenance of several roadways, recreational facilities such as swimming pools and hockey rinks and water distribution infrastructure, became known as fertile ground for political patronage
in Massachusetts. As a result, top management became focused on the satisfaction of political goals and constituent
recreation requests at the expense of mundane, less visible responsibilities including sewage treatment facilities operations. At the same time, following the ends of World War II
and the Korean War
the sewage treatment facility opened in 1952 at Nut Island was manned by several ex-servicemen. These men were by nature of their military experience both strongly inclined to build a powerfully cohesive unit possessing excellent improvisational skills and well suited to operating in isolation under adverse conditions.
The management and employee situations satisfied the requirements of step one of Levy’s analysis. As time progressed management focused on political issues and became reliant on the quiet, consistent operation of the facility that the workers gladly provided. The plant staff found management to be so trusting and distracted as to provide little or no assistance in the resolution of problems. This resulted in the workers resenting the distant managers and creating a self-sustaining, self-regulating operation that often misreported situations and problems in an effort to both satisfy outside regulators and avoid management entirely. This environment led to staff reliance on unscientific treatment procedures and improvised unorthodox plant operation, primarily to avoid equipment replacement that required management approval. Eventually a series of plant failures culminated in a massive four-day discharge of untreated sewage in January 1976.
The failures at Nut Island and the companion Deer Island
plant adjacent to Winthrop, Massachusetts
had far-reaching environmental
and political effects. Fecal coliform bacteria levels forced frequent swimming prohibitions along the harbor beaches and the Charles River
for many years. The City of Quincy sued the MDC and the separate Boston Water and Sewer Commission
in 1982, charging unchecked systemic pollution of the city’s waterfront. That suit was followed by one by the Conservation Law Foundation
and finally by the United States Government, resulting in a landmark court-ordered cleanup of Boston Harbor. The lawsuits forced then Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
to propose separating the water and sewer treatment divisions from the MDC, resulting in the creation of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority
in 1985. The slow progress of the cleanup became a central theme of the 1988 U.S. presidential election as George H.W. Bush defeated Dukakis partly through campaign speeches casting doubt on the governor’s environmental record, which Dukakis had claimed was better than that of Bush. The court-ordered cleanup continued throughout the next two decades and is still ongoing.
Human resources
Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...
condition in which a team of skilled employees becomes isolated from distracted top manager
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
s resulting in a catastrophic loss of the ability of the team to perform an important mission. The term was coined by Paul F. Levy
Paul F. Levy
Paul F. Levy is the former President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and a resident of Newton, Massachusetts....
, a former Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
state official, in an article in the Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review is a general management magazine published since 1922 by Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School. A monthly research-based magazine written for business practitioners, it claims a high ranking business readership among academics, executives,...
published in 2001. The article outlines a situation which resulted in massive pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
of Boston Harbor
Boston Harbor
Boston Harbor is a natural harbor and estuary of Massachusetts Bay, and is located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeast.-History:...
, and proposes that the name of the facility involved be applied to similar situations in other business enterprises. The work is used as a source in human resources management case studies and is featured on the websites of several business management consulting
Management consulting
Management consulting indicates both the industry and practice of helping organizations improve their performance primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement....
firms and health care
Health care
Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...
institutions.
Description
Levy served as executive director of the Massachusetts Water Resources AuthorityMassachusetts Water Resources Authority
The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is a public authority in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that provides wholesale drinking water and sewage services to certain municipalities and industrial users in the state, primarily in the Boston area.The authority receives water from the Quabbin...
(MWRA) from 1987 to 1992 before writing "The Nut Island Effect: When Good Teams Go Wrong", which describes conditions at the authority’s Nut Island sewage treatment
Sewage treatment
Sewage treatment, or domestic wastewater treatment, is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater and household sewage, both runoff and domestic. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove physical, chemical and biological contaminants...
facility in Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...
over a three decade period ending in the plant’s closure in 1997. The article uses the history of the facility to illustrate a five-step process that defines a business scenario that progressively leads to management-employee alienation, employee self-regulation of critical processes and finally catastrophic mission failure. In summary, the steps are:
- Management distraction and team autonomy – A climate exists where management is consumed by other issues and the team is a cohesive unit of highly motivated and skilled individuals who thrive on autonomy and avoid publicity.
- Assumptions and resentment – Management assumes team self-sufficiency and begins to ignore requests for assistance, resulting in team resentment of management.
- De-facto separation – The team cohesiveness and resentment of management results in a full separation characterized by limited communication and complete refusal of outside assistance.
- Self-rule – In order to satisfy external requirements the team creates self-imposed regulations which create hidden problems.
- Chronic systemic failure and collapse – Management indifference and misguided team self-regulation become systemic, resulting in repeated failure and eventual catastrophic collapse.
Background
Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...
by the 1940s for use as the site of a sewage treatment facility. The operation of sewage treatment and disposal facilities in populous eastern Massachusetts was the responsibility of an independent state agency known as the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC). The commission, also responsible for the construction and maintenance of several roadways, recreational facilities such as swimming pools and hockey rinks and water distribution infrastructure, became known as fertile ground for political patronage
Patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...
in Massachusetts. As a result, top management became focused on the satisfaction of political goals and constituent
Electoral district
An electoral district is a distinct territorial subdivision for holding a separate election for one or more seats in a legislative body...
recreation requests at the expense of mundane, less visible responsibilities including sewage treatment facilities operations. At the same time, following the ends of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
the sewage treatment facility opened in 1952 at Nut Island was manned by several ex-servicemen. These men were by nature of their military experience both strongly inclined to build a powerfully cohesive unit possessing excellent improvisational skills and well suited to operating in isolation under adverse conditions.
The management and employee situations satisfied the requirements of step one of Levy’s analysis. As time progressed management focused on political issues and became reliant on the quiet, consistent operation of the facility that the workers gladly provided. The plant staff found management to be so trusting and distracted as to provide little or no assistance in the resolution of problems. This resulted in the workers resenting the distant managers and creating a self-sustaining, self-regulating operation that often misreported situations and problems in an effort to both satisfy outside regulators and avoid management entirely. This environment led to staff reliance on unscientific treatment procedures and improvised unorthodox plant operation, primarily to avoid equipment replacement that required management approval. Eventually a series of plant failures culminated in a massive four-day discharge of untreated sewage in January 1976.
The failures at Nut Island and the companion Deer Island
Deer Island (Massachusetts)
Deer Island is a peninsula in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. Since 1996 it is part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. Although still an island by name, Deer Island has been connected to the mainland since the former Shirley Gut channel, which once separated the island from the...
plant adjacent to Winthrop, Massachusetts
Winthrop, Massachusetts
The Town of Winthrop is a municipality in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population of Winthrop was 17,497 at the 2010 U.S. Census. It is an oceanside suburban community in Greater Boston situated at the north entrance to Boston Harbor and is very close to Logan International...
had far-reaching environmental
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
and political effects. Fecal coliform bacteria levels forced frequent swimming prohibitions along the harbor beaches and the Charles River
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
for many years. The City of Quincy sued the MDC and the separate Boston Water and Sewer Commission
Boston Water and Sewer Commission
The Boston Water and Sewer Commission serves retail customers with water services in Boston, Massachusetts. It purchases water wholesale from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority ....
in 1982, charging unchecked systemic pollution of the city’s waterfront. That suit was followed by one by the Conservation Law Foundation
Conservation Law Foundation
Conservation Law Foundation is an environmental advocacy organization based in New England. Since 1966, CLF's mission has been to advocate on behalf of the region's environment and its communities. CLF's advocacy work takes place in four program areas: Clean Energy & Climate Change, Clean Water &...
and finally by the United States Government, resulting in a landmark court-ordered cleanup of Boston Harbor. The lawsuits forced then Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...
to propose separating the water and sewer treatment divisions from the MDC, resulting in the creation of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority
The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is a public authority in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that provides wholesale drinking water and sewage services to certain municipalities and industrial users in the state, primarily in the Boston area.The authority receives water from the Quabbin...
in 1985. The slow progress of the cleanup became a central theme of the 1988 U.S. presidential election as George H.W. Bush defeated Dukakis partly through campaign speeches casting doubt on the governor’s environmental record, which Dukakis had claimed was better than that of Bush. The court-ordered cleanup continued throughout the next two decades and is still ongoing.