March 25, 2025 • 37 mins
NASA's journey of cultural transformation after the Columbia disaster reveals profound leadership lessons applicable to any organization facing challenges.
• The Columbia accident created a deeply personal sense of loss and responsibility within NASA's community
• Success and confidence had bred organizational arrogance where rigorous questioning had diminished
• Small, seemingly insignificant details (like foam impacts) can lead to catastrophic failure when not properly analyzed
• Leadership requires creating a culture where anyone at any level can speak up without fear
• Breaking "impossible" problems into smaller, manageable pieces leads to breakthrough solutions
• The most dangerous words in business are "that's how we've always done it"
• Asking "why" at every decision point is the foundation of good leadership
• Cultural change must be initiated from the top and demonstrated consistently
• Leaders must be confident enough to accept challenges to their thinking
• Even the most technical organizations must address the human "touchy-feely" aspects of culture
To transform your organization, ask why on every decision, ensure your team can ask you why, and hold yourself accountable to answering those questions honestly.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
If you've been stuck in fear, self-doubt, your past
failures and you're ready tobreak through your comfort zones
to finally reach the pinnacleof success in every area of your
life, then this podcast is foryou.
Here's your host, Terry LFossum.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, this is Terry Alfosum, and welcome back to a
very special edition of theComeback Chronicles podcast.
On Saturday, february 1st 2003,space Shuttle Columbia
disintegrated as it reenteredthe atmosphere over Texas and
Louisiana, killing all sevenastronauts on board.
(00:46):
This was the second spaceshuttle mission to end in
disaster after the loss of theChallenger and crew in 1986.
America and the world was inshock.
Nasa knew that changes had to bemade.
Their culture had to change.
Their entire way of doingbusiness had to change.
To make those changes, theybrought in Paul Sean Hill as the
(01:06):
youngest director of missionoperations in NASA history.
As the director of mission opsfrom 2007 to 2014, he is
credited with revolutionizingthe leadership culture,
dramatically reducing costs,increasing capability, while
still conducting missions inspace.
Today, he's a leadershipevangelist, an executive
(01:27):
consultant and a speaker whosecandor and passion has inspired
leaders from across manyindustries.
His book Leadership from theMission Control Room will help
you lead change in anyorganization you're part of
Today, to help us understandNASA's Comeback Chronicle and
apply those principles to ourcompanies and ourselves.
Paul, thank you so much forjoining me.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Oh, my pleasure.
Always good to talk to you,Terry.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Same at you, and Paul and I go way back to actually
helping me with a book that I'mworking on right now and then
having beers around his swimmingpool afterwards.
So let's talk about you.
Were there at Mission Ops.
You were part of NASA at thetime when the Columbia accident
happened.
Tell me the emotions that wereinvolved there.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
At that point I had been a flight director for seven
years, both for Space Stationand for Space Shuttle, and, as
you can can imagine, thecommunity was stunned.
It was, you know, losingastronauts.
In that business it's likelosing family members, because
they aren't just passengers onthe spacecraft that we're
managing.
I mean, they are friends.
(02:36):
In some cases they are family.
We know them extraordinarilywell and every one of us
believes it's my job to protecttheir lives and help them get
the mission done.
So a loss like that it feelslike losing a very, very close
family member and it isdifficult not to kind of
internalize the guilt.
(02:57):
If I had been better, thiswouldn't happen.
Now, on that day, I mean, Ididn't even work that mission.
So I will tell you, it is notjust the people that worked the
mission that felt that way, anyof us in the community.
And the more leadershipresponsibility that you had
leading up to that, the moredifficult it was not to feel
some piece of that guilt.
I wasn't good enough, weweren't good enough, because if
(03:20):
I had been and if we had been,they wouldn't come back home
alive and that's on us.
So it so that was terrible.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And then you know also, there are grieving widows
and widowers, there are grievingchildren, there are grieving
family members, many of themright there at the launch.
Of course, I've been to acouple now, right there at the
launch, that are staring inamazement and grief and horror
at that moment.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Well, and I can tell you, at the time that happened,
columbia that is I happened tobe in a school gymnasium
watching my gosh, I think sixthgrade daughter play basketball
in a recreational league.
Sitting right next to me wasCharlie Hobart's wife.
Charlie was the astronaut thatwas on console as Capcom calling
(04:08):
Columbia in Columbia, houston,with no answer, and our kids
were playing basketball togetherand I looked up and saw my wife
come in the gym looking likeshe'd seen a ghost, and I walked
over to her.
She handed me my keys and saidsomething just happened to the
shuttle.
I think you need to go to work.
And I drive like a bat out ofhell to the control center.
(04:29):
Pull in, go up into the controlcenter, into one of our
management meeting rooms, and itwas about that time that I
realized I'm in shorts andtennis shoes and a T-shirt and
have no idea what I'm doing here.
And you know that goes a longway to characterize the entire
community.
You know, the people that wereworking the mission in the
(04:49):
control room were very focusedon doing the job until it was
clear they're gone, we havenothing left we can do.
And then the community was kindof like me looking around
thinking, okay, what am Isupposed to do now, holy cow,
how do we take next steps?
And then you start taking thosenext steps, both to figure out
what happened and how do wecorrect that, how do we recover
(05:13):
from that, how do we fly again?
Now, my role in that timeframewas very much on the technical
and it was first a role in theaccident investigation itself,
trying to put together imageryand various other things from
various governance sensors totry to help us isolate what
(05:34):
caused the vehicle to come apartin the first place.
And then after that I wasassigned the leadership of the
next flight and leading the teamthat would figure out how we
would detect damage on theoutside of a shuttle if it
happened again when we launched,and then how we would get
(05:54):
outside and repair it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Because the accident was attributed to a phone piece
coming off and hitting theshuttle, was it not?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
It was, the impact of which was trivialized at the
time inside the NASA community.
It was not taken as seriouslyas it should have been and
there's some interestingpsychological reasons for that,
some of which are the obviousones.
You know, flying shuttles is areally difficult business and
(06:23):
the most difficult part of it,from the outside looking in, is
7 million pounds of fireshooting out of the back of the
rocket.
It's easy to see those types ofthings in the systems that
could cause the rocket toexplode if we're not paying
attention to them.
And there were a handful ofproblems like that in the
propulsion system that werebeing worked in the shuttle
(06:44):
program, things that the pro thecommunity did not fully
understand and was veryconcerned like.
There's lots of fightinginternally on whether or not we
understood some of theseproblems that could cause
engines to explode while welaunched.
And there were a handful ofother big ticket things like
that, one of which thatthreatened the entire electrical
system on every single showthat we were working.
(07:05):
And those things it's easy tosee.
We have to keep our eye onthose.
In this case, a pound or so offoam came off the tank and hit
the vehicle, and a vehicle thatmost of us take for granted that
hey, it's like an airplane,it's a space shuttle.
Some foam hit the leading edge.
Actually, we didn't even thinkit hit the leading edge, to tell
(07:26):
you the truth.
We thought it hit the bottom bythe left main landing gear door
for the longest time.
It wasn't until much later thatwe realized.
No, I did hit that left leadingedge.
But even with that knowledge wewould have said what's the big
deal?
It's just foam.
And the interesting thing is anorganization with such
technical prowess as NASA andall of those very, very smart
(07:49):
people inside the agency and allof the contractor team that
worked with us, not one of ussat down and said well, what's
the actual amount of energy?
A pound and a half of foamtraveling dealt a velocity of
700 miles per hour, Right, whatif I just stood on the highway
and you hit me in the chest withthat piece of foam at that
(08:13):
velocity?
What do I think would happen?
And we didn't actually do thatsimple calculation until well
after the accident.
In fact, there was time whenthere was significant argument
in conference rooms aboutwhether or not the phone was
even capable of damaging theleading edge.
And those arguments were allbased on emotion, not based on
(08:33):
the actual data, Because onceyou do that back of the envelope
calculation, the experts on thestructure of the leading edge
could tell you just like that oh, we can't tolerate that.
If that happens, we're in a lotof trouble.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Right.
So now you've got to find outwhat happened, of course, but
now NASA needs a comeback.
I mean, this is their secondshuttle to blow up and more
astronauts killed.
That obviously can't keephappening.
How do you take a situationthat is that highly charged with
(09:06):
emotion, not to mention thefuture of manned space, at the
very least from the UnitedStates of America and everything
that goes along with that, allthe industry and everything goes
along with that?
You're saddled with helpingthat turn around.
Where do you even start?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, I got to tell you in this part of my career it
was easy for me, if you couldthink of it that way because my
entire role was technicalleadership.
It was not on a cultural part atthis point A few years later,
based on this experience and howthat went, in my role in it, I
had an opportunity to affect theculture itself.
(09:46):
At this point, the programmanagement, namely Wayne Hale
and John Shannon.
They looked really hard at theaccident investigation reports
and what they were saying hadbeen wrong with the process and
the culture, the way certaindecisions were being made
without rigor, and they went towork on that.
Meanwhile, while they were doingthat, my job was to figure out
(10:07):
how do we inspect the outside ofthe spacecraft and how do we
repair it, and how do we getastronauts to all parts of the
outside of the spacecraft torepair it in the first place,
since that didn't exist and therepair has to be able to survive
entry heating.
So for that part, I will tellyou as a leader, you know, and
in fact I would have told youthen wow, my leadership job is
(10:28):
hard.
It's the hardest to do to everbe, because all parts of that
problem were consideredimpossible.
And when I was asked to leadthe team to solve those problems
, I was told we expect that in acouple of months you're going
to come back and report out thatit's not solvable and then we
are going to accept that riskand move on without being able
(10:49):
to inspect the outside of thevehicle.
Wow Repair.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I want to.
I want to cut in real quick.
I want to cut in real quick.
So much to unpack with whatyou've been saying here.
For as far as everybodyrelating to your own life, your
own business or whatever noticeyou got to look for the details.
The devil's in the details,even if it's for yourself.
What's causing you theseself-doubts, these excuses
(11:14):
you're coming up with, thesefears.
Sometimes we just look at thebig things.
Maybe it's something smalleryou really need to look at, or
within your company, for yourcompany comeback.
You need to inspect all ofthese things and listen to
everybody, including the linepeople that have data and a
focus that you may not have.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
So I will tell you, I agree Absolutely.
I will tell you in this caseand it hasn't been written or
talked about, in my opinion,fully accurately, because the
general portrayal to the publicand, in fact, a lot of NASA, is
coming to accept this all thetime from people that didn't
live through this, but thecommon knowledge now is oh well,
(11:56):
the people down at the linelevel they knew this, and it was
managers at the top thatweren't listening, which is
apocryphal.
It's not actually true.
Were there one or two engineersthat were, that were raising
hell about this?
That some other action neededto be taken?
Yes, one in particular, though,had a reputation for flight
(12:18):
after flight being the, the, theguy who cried wolf.
So you have to ask yourself wow, how do you take that that
seriously when the same guy, infact, is quoted in one of the
books on the accident saying Ireally didn't know what should
be done.
I really didn't know what theproblem was.
I just felt like we weren'tdoing something that we should
(12:38):
have been doing.
I've got a lot of teams.
I'm not sure how I would havebeen able to use that input.
However, what is accurate is bythe time of the Columbia
accident, and it happened beforethat and it had been coming for
a few years.
The management team became lessand less willing to ask the
(12:59):
question why?
Why is this an okay thing to do?
Why do I think I know this?
And it became more and more thenorm, I wouldn't say the
culture, although culture kindof went down this path.
Right Organization with ahistory of making very rigorous
decisions.
It became more and more easy,in great part because we had
(13:22):
been so successful and had doneso well, and the flights
themselves had gotten longer andmore complicated and we still
kept knocking them out of thepark, doing this really
difficult job, making it lookeasy.
And with that confidence comes acertain amount of arrogance.
And the insidious part of thisis it's easy to not be aware of
(13:43):
it.
You don't realize that you'renot asking why on all these
things.
You don't really realize thathey, look, I'm the 900-pound
gorilla at the head of the table.
I've heard all the inputs.
I know what the right answer is.
I don't want to hear any moretalk.
Let's move on.
And over time, when you get tothat point, all the people who
work for you who, by the way,also look up to you, they don't
(14:05):
just have to fear you and nottell you what you need to know.
Sometimes they realize you arethe smartest guy in the room.
So if you don't need any moredata, even if the rest of us
don't really get it, we'll gowith you, boss, and I would say
there was a strong element ofthat, and we had been moving so
fast on so many things for solong, anytime when the NASA
(14:26):
budget was being reduced.
So missions were becoming morecomplex and we were told to do
more of them at a higher ratewith less money Faster, better,
cheaper.
In fact, that's what we call itfaster, better, cheaper.
And, as most good engineersknow, you can't get all three
usually.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
You can get two of the three, not all three.
You choose.
We tried to do all of them, andwhat would happen is then the
community.
Because you choose.
We tried to do all of them andwhat would happen is then the
community.
Because we wanted to supportthe boss.
We knew that the seniormanagement didn't have more
money, but we got to keep flying.
There were some things that wedidn't take forward that we
should have because we realized,well, this isn't on the program
(15:02):
manager's radar and if it's noton his radar, he's not going to
give us budget to do moreanalysis or more tests.
So let's just forget this andlet's move on to the stuff that
we know he takes seriously,which is how incrementally the
organization culturally startsaccepting things without the
rigor that we once did.
And the hard part really isbefore you can then listen to
(15:24):
those guys closer to thehardware or on the line.
You have to change that mindsetin the team that it's okay to
ask why.
It's not just okay.
It's incumbent upon us to askwhy we're going to take a risk,
we're going to accept somein-flight anomaly?
Okay, why?
What's our rationale.
Is it because we really want toor we really need to?
(15:47):
The schedule's getting tight,it's going to cost us money, or
is it?
No, it's because I understandthat risk.
Here's what I understand,here's why it's a good risk to
take, and I know, or we know,that if we take this next action
, we still can accomplish themission or protect the people
(16:07):
who have trusted us with theirlives.
Ask why.
And if I'm the boss and I makea decision that you on the team
don't think we're ready yet tomake, or my logic isn't sound,
you're expected, in fact, needto be empowered to ask me why,
and I need to be able to answerit.
It can't just be because I'mthe boss and I get to say so, at
least not on the things thatmatter.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And I think this is critical.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
I would learn later it all matters.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
It all matters and I think this is really critical
from the corporate standpointtoo, and I know you do a lot of
corporate speaking.
That's what your book addresses, et cetera.
It's these lessons applied tobusiness and I hope everybody's
listening from that standpointand for this honor to other of
your friends in business,because these are critical
points.
If your company needs to have acomeback and many of the
(16:56):
companies out there right now domany of the organizations,
philanthropic organizations,non-profits need to have their
own comeback and these are someof the steps to make it happen.
What are some of the othersteps that you took when you
were doing all of this, paul?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
You know, when it came to solving the quote
impossible technical problemswhich, for the record, if they
had been impossible we couldn'thave solved them, which, by the
way, I will also say.
So we started that work inFebruary.
We started bringing in therecommendations or recommended
actions to actually solve eachpart of that problem by mid-May,
(17:33):
end of May or so, not more thanabout three months.
And within two or three monthsafter that we had nailed all of
it with one kind of gray areaand that's how to repair one
very specific dicey part of thewing, and we had options for
that.
It just wasn't as rock solid asthe rest.
So, three to five months and wehad all the impossible stuff
(17:54):
solved.
And for me, as a leader, I justhad to carve the different parts
of the problem up and therewere different areas of
expertise that we needed toweigh in and solve them.
So I carved the problem intopieces that each of those areas
of expertise and the experts inthem could then focus just on
those.
(18:15):
And then, as they would comeback to me, and in fact almost
across the board, the bestexperts we had in each part of
the various problems that we hadto solve came back to me at
first and said, yeah, that's notpossible, we can't do it, oh
wow.
And so my pushback on them istell me why, tell me what the
hurdle is, and then let's talkabout how do we approach it
(18:36):
without having to clear theimpossible hurdle.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Do me a favor.
Do me a favor.
I'm going to jump in Repeatthat that was huge.
Say it again.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Tell me why you think something's impossible.
What, specifically, is thetechnical hurdle?
I'm not telling you that you'rewrong.
Tell me what that hurdle is andnow let's see if we come up
with an approach to solve itthat doesn't require us going
over that impossible hurdle,because if it is impossible,
it's impossible.
Let's put looking at theimpossible solution and find
(19:08):
ways to solve it differently.
And we did, case by case, andin fact and this is an important
point for me in a learninglesson as a leader, it wasn't me
asking them those questions andthen I realized what the
answers were Across the board.
This was true in the accidentinvestigation and it was true in
this return to flight effort.
(19:29):
This was true in the accidentinvestigation and it was true in
this return-to-flight effort.
The guys who told me, from myexperience and expertise, this
is not possible each one of themwas the one that eventually
came back and said I get this.
This is how we're trying tosolve it in the impossible way,
(19:49):
and try to work around that.
What do we have to change inthe environment?
What do we have to change inthe ground rule, in our approach
to this?
That doesn't require thatimpossible.
Whatever that impossible thingis, let's go around it.
It's those experts that, afterenough of those type sessions,
came back and said I got it, Iknow how to do this.
(20:09):
And we didn't do it in one greatbig you know fell swoop.
It was little incrementalpieces that we put together and
now this part of the problemsolved.
More incremental pieces.
Put those together.
Now this part of the problemsolved Because little solvable
pieces we can wrap our mindsaround.
Even a hundred solvable piecesyou sit back and look at and you
(20:31):
can be overwhelmed.
Carve it down into small pieces, get the impossible solutions
out of your way and try toactually solve the problem in
some other way.
One of the things I loveEliminate the impossible
condition.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
One of the things I love to ask is when people come
up to me well, there's no way,it can't be done.
There's no way.
So, okay, I get that.
All right, if there was a way,what would it be?
And for some reason, paul, forsome reason, their brain shifts
and they go.
Well, I guess if there was away, it would be.
I'm like, oh my God, there itis Same thing, If you could.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
just.
Well, it's like this problem Ifwe could just do this, then I
could solve that problem.
Okay, well, what does it taketo do that?
Well, if we were going to dothat, then we would also have to
do these tests and develop thiscapability.
So, okay, what does it take forus to do that?
Well, we would have to do thesethings and a week later we
would be at work.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Isn't it funny.
It really is about asking thequestions, asking the questions,
asking the questions.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Ignore the can't be done, just ask the questions and
they can come up with solutionsthemselves.
So I'll tell you that when thateffort and that effort, by the
way, was almost two and a halfyears From the time we started
that work right after theColumbia accident the time we
flew the next shuttle was abouttwo and a half years right after
the Columbia accident.
(21:51):
The time we flew the nextshuttle was about two and a half
years Now.
Most of our work in nailingdown the solutions to those
problems we were done withinabout six months, at least the
early, you know, pathfinder work.
And then it was another year ormore to actually turn that into
real flight hardware, realflight software, and get it
tested and proved to be on theshuttle so that we could fly it
on that very next flight.
(22:12):
But it all went swimming.
It was great.
As you know, we went back toflying shuttles.
It was still hard.
We still had to pay very closeattention to little details.
The community, the broadershuttle community, bigger than
just my flight control community, had definitely taken to heart
(22:32):
that notion that we have to askwhy, we have to have rigorous
answers to those questions oneverything that we do Now.
From that experience I ended upbecoming director of mission
operations over the course ofthe next two years or so and
then in that role actually evenbefore that as deputy director I
(22:57):
worked with my predecessor,melanie Mallon-Flint, and he had
been concerned about someproblems not with the rest of
NASA culture, not that theydidn't have their challenges but
you know, you fix what you canfix.
So we wanted to fix what wasin-house first, yeah, and he saw
things in-house in the missionoperations organization that he
didn't understand.
(23:17):
That looked like we're doingthings, because this is where
we've always done them.
It's the good old boy network.
There's some things that we saywe're very rigorous about that
we're not.
There's other things that wedon't have documented, but we
are very rigorous about it andwe spent a very focused effort
over the course of a couple ofyears analyzing that and working
(23:40):
as a team In fact I'd say we.
Alan was part of that processfor about six months and then he
handed it off to me when Ireplaced him as director of
mission operations and all of mydirect reports who had been all
Alan's direct reports we keptfocusing on those same things.
(24:00):
What is it about us that makesus uniquely capable?
What makes the performance ofour organization different than
other similar organizations inwhat we do?
How do we answer thosequestions?
And over time we came torealize, as a management team,
all of those very things thatAlan was the first one to say
out loud.
You don't challenge the cultureinternally.
(24:21):
That's disloyalty to the team,it's disloyalty to the guys that
came before us.
You know, in our case, you know, chris kraft and gene kranz put
us on the moon.
How dare you say right culture,is that right?
Yeah, but we let some, we letsome bad behaviors creep in,
just as the show program hadleading up to columbia.
We saw similar things insidemission control.
(24:44):
The difference was we care Ishouldn't say we cared, they
didn't care.
It's not fair.
We saw it and the fact that wesaw it, we care enough to not
ignore it and just assume thatwe are the gods of man's
spaceflight.
This stuff doesn't matter,which I will admit to you that
for a NASA engineer, especiallyfor somebody who spent a career
in mission operations, right,the way we would refer to that
(25:07):
is we took the touchy-feelybullshit serious.
We had been trained not to Imean, it wasn't like I came up
with that term myself.
We were told hey, don't forgetto dance with the one that brung
you.
You're really good at what youdo because of your rocket
science.
All that touchy-feely bullshitdoesn't matter, and what we
realized was you know, that'sthe very stuff that got in the
(25:28):
shuttle program's way that ledto Columbia, stuff that got in
the shuttle programs way thatled to columbia.
That is the very thing that wehave now let get in our way
inside the mission operationsorganization.
Yeah, so I think to a greatextent my experience during the
return to flight uh, helped,helped make me, I think, um more
(25:48):
attuned to seeing this and notblowing it off because it's not
technical, it's not the rocketscience, and so I don't care.
I'm the head guy at the head ofthe table, so I get to make
decisions and I don't reallycare about that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Well, there's a lot of smart people at NASA, but the
bottom line is they're people,and, of course, the words that's
the way we've always donethings around here are probably
the most dangerous words in allof business, and NASA as well.
Wouldn't you say things whenthey?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
established some process actually had a reason to
do it that way, but then youkind of forget about it and you
just kind of keep doing the samething because that's the way
you've always done it.
Well, if that's what you'realways going to do, then sure,
(26:40):
keep doing it that way.
But, as Marshall Goldsmith wouldsay well, got you here, won't
get you there, that's it.
So you got to think real hardabout it.
And it's that mindset of justlooking in and just assuming
well, this is what we've alwaysdone, so this is how we'll
always do it.
That's one of the ways youcreep along and stop asking the
whys, stop having the rigor,because, well, we know it's
(27:03):
right, we know we're goodbecause we're mission operations
and everything we do is gold.
Well, no, that's the recipe forthe next accident is going to
be our fault.
We can't let that happen.
And so we learned how to dothings like how do you enable
all of the actually anybody atany level of the management, or
even at the working level in themission operations director?
(27:25):
We went far enough that it waseasy for anybody at any level to
raise their hand and say Paul,I think what you just said was
wrong.
I think we need to come backand have that conversation again
.
And they knew they weren'trisking their career to do it.
In fact, the ones that would beat risk are the ones that, after
they let me screw something upafterwards, say in the hallway
(27:47):
well, that was wrong, we allknew that was going to be a
mistake.
I guess Paul was the only onethat didn't know.
That's the guy that I'm goingto fire, not for saying that,
but for not having the courageto speak up if he actually knew.
And the way you get there isget everyone aligned on our core
purpose as an organization.
In fact, I have a speech that Ifirst gave a number of years
(28:09):
ago.
That's called Lead Proudly toFailure.
And it's all about this point.
And that is forget being proudof who we are.
Be proud of how we do what wedo In the case of mission
operations.
We exist to protect theastronauts, accomplish the
mission and not damage thehardware.
(28:30):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
That's our entire job there you go, and then wrapped
around.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
That is now.
How do we do business in a waythat we make sure that we're
making right decisions for rightreasons?
We're not letting opinion creepin or we don't have the courage
to speak up because the uppermanagement has said they want
this to happen, but we thinkthat's the wrong thing.
We'll say that it's incumbentupon us to say that, just like
(28:58):
in the control room, that onesmart engineer who could have
kept me, as a flight director,from making a mistake that puts
a crew at risk, if he doesn'tspeak up, it's not my fault.
I was dumb enough, I didn'tknow we were making a mistake.
The one guy in the room didn'tspeak up.
He didn't learn what ourculture is all about and the
culture there and this is whatwe really learned.
It's just kind of the magicthat I helped bring from the
(29:19):
control room into our managementranks although, again, to be
fair, alan was the one that gotus to see this in the first
place.
So I like giving credit wherecredit's due.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Another big point, right right there.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
But the whole idea that we have to have the courage
to speak up and say I know weare doing a mistake and if every
one of us has the courage to dothat, accidents like Columbia,
accidents like Challenger aresignificantly less likely to
happen, as are other things thatare perhaps less impressive in
(29:54):
other businesses.
I actually had somebody ask mein an audience one time how does
this apply to my business?
Because we don't have rockets,we're not going to blow up
rockets or kill astronauts.
I said, well, is it possible?
And actually the person who'sasked me this was in their
business office.
I said do you have businessprocesses in your company that,
if you don't manage themcorrectly, you could impact cost
(30:14):
to customers, lose customersover your costs or your
mismanagement of money, maybeeven put your company out of
business?
Oh yeah, that could happen.
But there you go.
My guess is, to your companythat's going to feel just as
traumatic as losing yourastronauts.
So you have to frame it in thatway.
What are the losses?
We can't afford to do, and arewe willing now to lose fear of
(30:36):
those, to give us the courage tospeak up and say something that
would otherwise make meuncomfortable to say?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, absolutely, and along with that, though, you've
got to be the leader thatallows that to happen.
You're confident enough inyourself that you create the
culture.
That that's okay.
You don't think it'squestioning your leadership or
your knowledge or your skill.
It's doing the right thing.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
And you know and the hard part there is, it has to be
.
That message has to be sent anddemonstrated from the top down.
You cannot bubble that up fromthe bottom, because power sits
at the head of the table.
Everybody knows it.
Even if, as a leader, you'renot beating everybody over the
head with it, it doesn't changethe fact that the dynamic in the
(31:18):
room is you have the power toget everybody promoted.
You have the power to movemoney in the organization to
approve programs, cancelprograms into projects, whatever
that is, and it does affect thedynamic.
But you can, in fact, if you'revery deliberate about this every
time you engage with your team,send that message down.
It's okay for any of you totell me that.
(31:40):
If you think I'm making amistake and I am expecting you
to weigh in on every decision wemake which doesn't mean every
one of you is expected to be anexpert at all things Not
realistic and it's not evennecessary but if you have a
point of view on it or there'ssome part of it that it just
doesn't click for you doesn'tseem like we're making the right
(32:00):
decision, say it.
It'll enable the experts aroundthe team to then weigh in and
answer the male and answer thewise, and then, once we've done
that, let's move on and let'sget to that next decision.
You can do that as a leader,but, boy, it takes discipline
every single day to do thatbecause what?
they are looking for, whetherthey're conscious of it or not.
(32:22):
Is that indication of?
Well, he may say he wants that,but did you see how he raped
that guy over the coals?
Who dared to say that to him or, worse, fired somebody who
challenged him on something.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Then it'll never happen again.
They'll never bring it up again.
We're getting near the end ofour time, I'm sorry to say so.
I know there's going to be alot of NASA and space
enthusiasts watching this, sofor them specifically, nasa's
role has changed.
Briefly, what is NASA's rolenow?
Has it really changed or hasn'tit?
What do you see?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
You know it's kind of a mixed bag.
You know NASA is stilldeveloping new its own flight
hardware, new big rocket, newbig spacecraft.
When I say they are developing,they are managing the
development project, but, likemost NASA equipment, it's being
built by companies like Boeingand Lockheed.
They have different contractstructure with some companies
like SpaceX and Blue Origin,where NASA has a less hands-on
(33:18):
role in the development and, insome cases, less hands-on role
with the flight operations, andthis is kind of a new thing
that's getting the attention ofthe federal government.
Maybe we should be doing less,not just in NASA.
Maybe we ought to go back andbe more like that in some of the
DOD work.
To be fair, though, the DODtried some of this in the
(33:39):
operational environment 20 yearsago, 30 years ago, and found
out in a hurry.
They lost all kinds ofexpertise and found themselves
not in a good position to managewhat some of those people were
doing because of that, and theyhad to take steps back away from
it.
The real problem that NASA'sdealing with is, over the
decades, their developmentprograms became extraordinarily
(34:02):
expensive with these big costplus contracts, but I would say,
as a former NASA guy, thatlargely happened because NASA
didn't manage them.
Well, nasa didn't hold thecontractor's feet in the fire to
deliver on contract, deliver oncost or on schedule.
They kept giving them highaward fees anyway, because we're
all family.
You got to take care of thefamily and you get what you
(34:24):
incentivize in the contract.
If NASA had done a better jobmanaging those contracts, they
would not have had that samerunaway cost growth.
If they did, on some program,they had options to end that
contract and start again, whichthey also didn't want to do for
other reasons.
And it's not easy to do that.
But if you're never willing totake any of those steps, then of
(34:47):
course costs are going to goout of control and the
contractor performance may godownhill.
Okay, I have said for some time, you don't solve that by just
stepping back and saying, hey,industry, you just do develop
all of it and go fly home right,right, so you were managing
those contracts with it, so weare unfortunately out of time.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
This is fantastic stuff and I know especially I
mean there's all the space folksthat are watching this,
listening to this, are going tolove the space details and the
business people and team membersare going to love the
leadership principles.
What's just something to leaveeverybody with as we close down
for the day.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
You know, if I was going to sum it all up and I've
said this a few times already,but if I would sum it all up,
the most important thing that Ilearned to take very seriously
every day as a leader was askmyself why, on every decision,
ask the people working for me,make recommendations, why, and
make sure they can ask me thosesame whys and hold myself
(35:46):
accountable to be able to answerthose whys.
And if I can't, or if we can't,maybe we're not ready to take
that risk.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Huge advice at the end of this podcast.
I know, once again, there's alot of people out there, first
of all, whose lives need to comeback, whose businesses need to
come back.
They're part of a charitableorganization, maybe a civic club
or something that needs acomeback, and I think that
Paul's words there areabsolutely critical all the way
through here.
(36:13):
So go back, listen to thisagain if you need to take notes.
Ask the questions.
Why change the culture?
Allow people to speak up, andthen you can have your own
Comeback Chronicle.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
So that's it for today's episode of the Comeback
Chronicles.
Head on over to Apple Podcastsor wherever you listen and
subscribe to the show.
One lucky listener every singleweek that posts a review on
Apple Podcasts will win a chancein the grand prize drawing to
win a $25,000 private VIP datewith Terry O Fossum himself.
(36:49):
Be sure to head on over toComebackChroniclesPodcastcom and
pick up a free copy of Terry'sgift and join us on the next
episode.
If you've been stuck in fear, self-doubt, your past
failures and you're ready tobreak through your comfort zones
to finally reach the pinnacleof success in every area of your
life, then this podcast is foryou.
Here's your host, Terry LFossum.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, this is Terry Alfosum, and welcome back to a
very special edition of theComeback Chronicles podcast.
On Saturday, february 1st 2003,space Shuttle Columbia
disintegrated as it reenteredthe atmosphere over Texas and
Louisiana, killing all sevenastronauts on board.
(00:46):
This was the second spaceshuttle mission to end in
disaster after the loss of theChallenger and crew in 1986.
America and the world was inshock.
Nasa knew that changes had to bemade.
Their culture had to change.
Their entire way of doingbusiness had to change.
To make those changes, theybrought in Paul Sean Hill as the
(01:06):
youngest director of missionoperations in NASA history.
As the director of mission opsfrom 2007 to 2014, he is
credited with revolutionizingthe leadership culture,
dramatically reducing costs,increasing capability, while
still conducting missions inspace.
Today, he's a leadershipevangelist, an executive
(01:27):
consultant and a speaker whosecandor and passion has inspired
leaders from across manyindustries.
His book Leadership from theMission Control Room will help
you lead change in anyorganization you're part of
Today, to help us understandNASA's Comeback Chronicle and
apply those principles to ourcompanies and ourselves.
Paul, thank you so much forjoining me.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Oh, my pleasure.
Always good to talk to you,Terry.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Same at you, and Paul and I go way back to actually
helping me with a book that I'mworking on right now and then
having beers around his swimmingpool afterwards.
So let's talk about you.
Were there at Mission Ops.
You were part of NASA at thetime when the Columbia accident
happened.
Tell me the emotions that wereinvolved there.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
At that point I had been a flight director for seven
years, both for Space Stationand for Space Shuttle, and, as
you can can imagine, thecommunity was stunned.
It was, you know, losingastronauts.
In that business it's likelosing family members, because
they aren't just passengers onthe spacecraft that we're
managing.
I mean, they are friends.
(02:36):
In some cases they are family.
We know them extraordinarilywell and every one of us
believes it's my job to protecttheir lives and help them get
the mission done.
So a loss like that it feelslike losing a very, very close
family member and it isdifficult not to kind of
internalize the guilt.
(02:57):
If I had been better, thiswouldn't happen.
Now, on that day, I mean, Ididn't even work that mission.
So I will tell you, it is notjust the people that worked the
mission that felt that way, anyof us in the community.
And the more leadershipresponsibility that you had
leading up to that, the moredifficult it was not to feel
some piece of that guilt.
I wasn't good enough, weweren't good enough, because if
(03:20):
I had been and if we had been,they wouldn't come back home
alive and that's on us.
So it so that was terrible.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And then you know also, there are grieving widows
and widowers, there are grievingchildren, there are grieving
family members, many of themright there at the launch.
Of course, I've been to acouple now, right there at the
launch, that are staring inamazement and grief and horror
at that moment.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Well, and I can tell you, at the time that happened,
columbia that is I happened tobe in a school gymnasium
watching my gosh, I think sixthgrade daughter play basketball
in a recreational league.
Sitting right next to me wasCharlie Hobart's wife.
Charlie was the astronaut thatwas on console as Capcom calling
(04:08):
Columbia in Columbia, houston,with no answer, and our kids
were playing basketball togetherand I looked up and saw my wife
come in the gym looking likeshe'd seen a ghost, and I walked
over to her.
She handed me my keys and saidsomething just happened to the
shuttle.
I think you need to go to work.
And I drive like a bat out ofhell to the control center.
(04:29):
Pull in, go up into the controlcenter, into one of our
management meeting rooms, and itwas about that time that I
realized I'm in shorts andtennis shoes and a T-shirt and
have no idea what I'm doing here.
And you know that goes a longway to characterize the entire
community.
You know, the people that wereworking the mission in the
(04:49):
control room were very focusedon doing the job until it was
clear they're gone, we havenothing left we can do.
And then the community was kindof like me looking around
thinking, okay, what am Isupposed to do now, holy cow,
how do we take next steps?
And then you start taking thosenext steps, both to figure out
what happened and how do wecorrect that, how do we recover
(05:13):
from that, how do we fly again?
Now, my role in that timeframewas very much on the technical
and it was first a role in theaccident investigation itself,
trying to put together imageryand various other things from
various governance sensors totry to help us isolate what
(05:34):
caused the vehicle to come apartin the first place.
And then after that I wasassigned the leadership of the
next flight and leading the teamthat would figure out how we
would detect damage on theoutside of a shuttle if it
happened again when we launched,and then how we would get
(05:54):
outside and repair it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Because the accident was attributed to a phone piece
coming off and hitting theshuttle, was it not?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
It was, the impact of which was trivialized at the
time inside the NASA community.
It was not taken as seriouslyas it should have been and
there's some interestingpsychological reasons for that,
some of which are the obviousones.
You know, flying shuttles is areally difficult business and
(06:23):
the most difficult part of it,from the outside looking in, is
7 million pounds of fireshooting out of the back of the
rocket.
It's easy to see those types ofthings in the systems that
could cause the rocket toexplode if we're not paying
attention to them.
And there were a handful ofproblems like that in the
propulsion system that werebeing worked in the shuttle
(06:44):
program, things that the pro thecommunity did not fully
understand and was veryconcerned like.
There's lots of fightinginternally on whether or not we
understood some of theseproblems that could cause
engines to explode while welaunched.
And there were a handful ofother big ticket things like
that, one of which thatthreatened the entire electrical
system on every single showthat we were working.
(07:05):
And those things it's easy tosee.
We have to keep our eye onthose.
In this case, a pound or so offoam came off the tank and hit
the vehicle, and a vehicle thatmost of us take for granted that
hey, it's like an airplane,it's a space shuttle.
Some foam hit the leading edge.
Actually, we didn't even thinkit hit the leading edge, to tell
(07:26):
you the truth.
We thought it hit the bottom bythe left main landing gear door
for the longest time.
It wasn't until much later thatwe realized.
No, I did hit that left leadingedge.
But even with that knowledge wewould have said what's the big
deal?
It's just foam.
And the interesting thing is anorganization with such
technical prowess as NASA andall of those very, very smart
(07:49):
people inside the agency and allof the contractor team that
worked with us, not one of ussat down and said well, what's
the actual amount of energy?
A pound and a half of foamtraveling dealt a velocity of
700 miles per hour, Right, whatif I just stood on the highway
and you hit me in the chest withthat piece of foam at that
(08:13):
velocity?
What do I think would happen?
And we didn't actually do thatsimple calculation until well
after the accident.
In fact, there was time whenthere was significant argument
in conference rooms aboutwhether or not the phone was
even capable of damaging theleading edge.
And those arguments were allbased on emotion, not based on
(08:33):
the actual data, Because onceyou do that back of the envelope
calculation, the experts on thestructure of the leading edge
could tell you just like that oh, we can't tolerate that.
If that happens, we're in a lotof trouble.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Right.
So now you've got to find outwhat happened, of course, but
now NASA needs a comeback.
I mean, this is their secondshuttle to blow up and more
astronauts killed.
That obviously can't keephappening.
How do you take a situationthat is that highly charged with
(09:06):
emotion, not to mention thefuture of manned space, at the
very least from the UnitedStates of America and everything
that goes along with that, allthe industry and everything goes
along with that?
You're saddled with helpingthat turn around.
Where do you even start?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, I got to tell you in this part of my career it
was easy for me, if you couldthink of it that way because my
entire role was technicalleadership.
It was not on a cultural part atthis point A few years later,
based on this experience and howthat went, in my role in it, I
had an opportunity to affect theculture itself.
(09:46):
At this point, the programmanagement, namely Wayne Hale
and John Shannon.
They looked really hard at theaccident investigation reports
and what they were saying hadbeen wrong with the process and
the culture, the way certaindecisions were being made
without rigor, and they went towork on that.
Meanwhile, while they were doingthat, my job was to figure out
(10:07):
how do we inspect the outside ofthe spacecraft and how do we
repair it, and how do we getastronauts to all parts of the
outside of the spacecraft torepair it in the first place,
since that didn't exist and therepair has to be able to survive
entry heating.
So for that part, I will tellyou as a leader, you know, and
in fact I would have told youthen wow, my leadership job is
(10:28):
hard.
It's the hardest to do to everbe, because all parts of that
problem were consideredimpossible.
And when I was asked to leadthe team to solve those problems
, I was told we expect that in acouple of months you're going
to come back and report out thatit's not solvable and then we
are going to accept that riskand move on without being able
(10:49):
to inspect the outside of thevehicle.
Wow Repair.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I want to.
I want to cut in real quick.
I want to cut in real quick.
So much to unpack with whatyou've been saying here.
For as far as everybodyrelating to your own life, your
own business or whatever noticeyou got to look for the details.
The devil's in the details,even if it's for yourself.
What's causing you theseself-doubts, these excuses
(11:14):
you're coming up with, thesefears.
Sometimes we just look at thebig things.
Maybe it's something smalleryou really need to look at, or
within your company, for yourcompany comeback.
You need to inspect all ofthese things and listen to
everybody, including the linepeople that have data and a
focus that you may not have.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
So I will tell you, I agree Absolutely.
I will tell you in this caseand it hasn't been written or
talked about, in my opinion,fully accurately, because the
general portrayal to the publicand, in fact, a lot of NASA, is
coming to accept this all thetime from people that didn't
live through this, but thecommon knowledge now is oh well,
(11:56):
the people down at the linelevel they knew this, and it was
managers at the top thatweren't listening, which is
apocryphal.
It's not actually true.
Were there one or two engineersthat were, that were raising
hell about this?
That some other action neededto be taken?
Yes, one in particular, though,had a reputation for flight
(12:18):
after flight being the, the, theguy who cried wolf.
So you have to ask yourself wow, how do you take that that
seriously when the same guy, infact, is quoted in one of the
books on the accident saying Ireally didn't know what should
be done.
I really didn't know what theproblem was.
I just felt like we weren'tdoing something that we should
(12:38):
have been doing.
I've got a lot of teams.
I'm not sure how I would havebeen able to use that input.
However, what is accurate is bythe time of the Columbia
accident, and it happened beforethat and it had been coming for
a few years.
The management team became lessand less willing to ask the
(12:59):
question why?
Why is this an okay thing to do?
Why do I think I know this?
And it became more and more thenorm, I wouldn't say the
culture, although culture kindof went down this path.
Right Organization with ahistory of making very rigorous
decisions.
It became more and more easy,in great part because we had
(13:22):
been so successful and had doneso well, and the flights
themselves had gotten longer andmore complicated and we still
kept knocking them out of thepark, doing this really
difficult job, making it lookeasy.
And with that confidence comes acertain amount of arrogance.
And the insidious part of thisis it's easy to not be aware of
(13:43):
it.
You don't realize that you'renot asking why on all these
things.
You don't really realize thathey, look, I'm the 900-pound
gorilla at the head of the table.
I've heard all the inputs.
I know what the right answer is.
I don't want to hear any moretalk.
Let's move on.
And over time, when you get tothat point, all the people who
work for you who, by the way,also look up to you, they don't
(14:05):
just have to fear you and nottell you what you need to know.
Sometimes they realize you arethe smartest guy in the room.
So if you don't need any moredata, even if the rest of us
don't really get it, we'll gowith you, boss, and I would say
there was a strong element ofthat, and we had been moving so
fast on so many things for solong, anytime when the NASA
(14:26):
budget was being reduced.
So missions were becoming morecomplex and we were told to do
more of them at a higher ratewith less money Faster, better,
cheaper.
In fact, that's what we call itfaster, better, cheaper.
And, as most good engineersknow, you can't get all three
usually.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
You can get two of the three, not all three.
You choose.
We tried to do all of them, andwhat would happen is then the
community.
Because you choose.
We tried to do all of them andwhat would happen is then the
community.
Because we wanted to supportthe boss.
We knew that the seniormanagement didn't have more
money, but we got to keep flying.
There were some things that wedidn't take forward that we
should have because we realized,well, this isn't on the program
(15:02):
manager's radar and if it's noton his radar, he's not going to
give us budget to do moreanalysis or more tests.
So let's just forget this andlet's move on to the stuff that
we know he takes seriously,which is how incrementally the
organization culturally startsaccepting things without the
rigor that we once did.
And the hard part really isbefore you can then listen to
(15:24):
those guys closer to thehardware or on the line.
You have to change that mindsetin the team that it's okay to
ask why.
It's not just okay.
It's incumbent upon us to askwhy we're going to take a risk,
we're going to accept somein-flight anomaly?
Okay, why?
What's our rationale.
Is it because we really want toor we really need to?
(15:47):
The schedule's getting tight,it's going to cost us money, or
is it?
No, it's because I understandthat risk.
Here's what I understand,here's why it's a good risk to
take, and I know, or we know,that if we take this next action
, we still can accomplish themission or protect the people
(16:07):
who have trusted us with theirlives.
Ask why.
And if I'm the boss and I makea decision that you on the team
don't think we're ready yet tomake, or my logic isn't sound,
you're expected, in fact, needto be empowered to ask me why,
and I need to be able to answerit.
It can't just be because I'mthe boss and I get to say so, at
least not on the things thatmatter.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And I think this is critical.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
I would learn later it all matters.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
It all matters and I think this is really critical
from the corporate standpointtoo, and I know you do a lot of
corporate speaking.
That's what your book addresses, et cetera.
It's these lessons applied tobusiness and I hope everybody's
listening from that standpointand for this honor to other of
your friends in business,because these are critical
points.
If your company needs to have acomeback and many of the
(16:56):
companies out there right now domany of the organizations,
philanthropic organizations,non-profits need to have their
own comeback and these are someof the steps to make it happen.
What are some of the othersteps that you took when you
were doing all of this, paul?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
You know, when it came to solving the quote
impossible technical problemswhich, for the record, if they
had been impossible we couldn'thave solved them, which, by the
way, I will also say.
So we started that work inFebruary.
We started bringing in therecommendations or recommended
actions to actually solve eachpart of that problem by mid-May,
(17:33):
end of May or so, not more thanabout three months.
And within two or three monthsafter that we had nailed all of
it with one kind of gray areaand that's how to repair one
very specific dicey part of thewing, and we had options for
that.
It just wasn't as rock solid asthe rest.
So, three to five months and wehad all the impossible stuff
(17:54):
solved.
And for me, as a leader, I justhad to carve the different parts
of the problem up and therewere different areas of
expertise that we needed toweigh in and solve them.
So I carved the problem intopieces that each of those areas
of expertise and the experts inthem could then focus just on
those.
(18:15):
And then, as they would comeback to me, and in fact almost
across the board, the bestexperts we had in each part of
the various problems that we hadto solve came back to me at
first and said, yeah, that's notpossible, we can't do it, oh
wow.
And so my pushback on them istell me why, tell me what the
hurdle is, and then let's talkabout how do we approach it
(18:36):
without having to clear theimpossible hurdle.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Do me a favor.
Do me a favor.
I'm going to jump in Repeatthat that was huge.
Say it again.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Tell me why you think something's impossible.
What, specifically, is thetechnical hurdle?
I'm not telling you that you'rewrong.
Tell me what that hurdle is andnow let's see if we come up
with an approach to solve itthat doesn't require us going
over that impossible hurdle,because if it is impossible,
it's impossible.
Let's put looking at theimpossible solution and find
(19:08):
ways to solve it differently.
And we did, case by case, andin fact and this is an important
point for me in a learninglesson as a leader, it wasn't me
asking them those questions andthen I realized what the
answers were Across the board.
This was true in the accidentinvestigation and it was true in
this return to flight effort.
(19:29):
This was true in the accidentinvestigation and it was true in
this return-to-flight effort.
The guys who told me, from myexperience and expertise, this
is not possible each one of themwas the one that eventually
came back and said I get this.
This is how we're trying tosolve it in the impossible way,
(19:49):
and try to work around that.
What do we have to change inthe environment?
What do we have to change inthe ground rule, in our approach
to this?
That doesn't require thatimpossible.
Whatever that impossible thingis, let's go around it.
It's those experts that, afterenough of those type sessions,
came back and said I got it, Iknow how to do this.
(20:09):
And we didn't do it in one greatbig you know fell swoop.
It was little incrementalpieces that we put together and
now this part of the problemsolved.
More incremental pieces.
Put those together.
Now this part of the problemsolved Because little solvable
pieces we can wrap our mindsaround.
Even a hundred solvable piecesyou sit back and look at and you
(20:31):
can be overwhelmed.
Carve it down into small pieces, get the impossible solutions
out of your way and try toactually solve the problem in
some other way.
One of the things I loveEliminate the impossible
condition.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
One of the things I love to ask is when people come
up to me well, there's no way,it can't be done.
There's no way.
So, okay, I get that.
All right, if there was a way,what would it be?
And for some reason, paul, forsome reason, their brain shifts
and they go.
Well, I guess if there was away, it would be.
I'm like, oh my God, there itis Same thing, If you could.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
just.
Well, it's like this problem Ifwe could just do this, then I
could solve that problem.
Okay, well, what does it taketo do that?
Well, if we were going to dothat, then we would also have to
do these tests and develop thiscapability.
So, okay, what does it take forus to do that?
Well, we would have to do thesethings and a week later we
would be at work.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Isn't it funny.
It really is about asking thequestions, asking the questions,
asking the questions.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Ignore the can't be done, just ask the questions and
they can come up with solutionsthemselves.
So I'll tell you that when thateffort and that effort, by the
way, was almost two and a halfyears From the time we started
that work right after theColumbia accident the time we
flew the next shuttle was abouttwo and a half years right after
the Columbia accident.
(21:51):
The time we flew the nextshuttle was about two and a half
years Now.
Most of our work in nailingdown the solutions to those
problems we were done withinabout six months, at least the
early, you know, pathfinder work.
And then it was another year ormore to actually turn that into
real flight hardware, realflight software, and get it
tested and proved to be on theshuttle so that we could fly it
on that very next flight.
(22:12):
But it all went swimming.
It was great.
As you know, we went back toflying shuttles.
It was still hard.
We still had to pay very closeattention to little details.
The community, the broadershuttle community, bigger than
just my flight control community, had definitely taken to heart
(22:32):
that notion that we have to askwhy, we have to have rigorous
answers to those questions oneverything that we do Now.
From that experience I ended upbecoming director of mission
operations over the course ofthe next two years or so and
then in that role actually evenbefore that as deputy director I
(22:57):
worked with my predecessor,melanie Mallon-Flint, and he had
been concerned about someproblems not with the rest of
NASA culture, not that theydidn't have their challenges but
you know, you fix what you canfix.
So we wanted to fix what wasin-house first, yeah, and he saw
things in-house in the missionoperations organization that he
didn't understand.
(23:17):
That looked like we're doingthings, because this is where
we've always done them.
It's the good old boy network.
There's some things that we saywe're very rigorous about that
we're not.
There's other things that wedon't have documented, but we
are very rigorous about it andwe spent a very focused effort
over the course of a couple ofyears analyzing that and working
(23:40):
as a team In fact I'd say we.
Alan was part of that processfor about six months and then he
handed it off to me when Ireplaced him as director of
mission operations and all of mydirect reports who had been all
Alan's direct reports we keptfocusing on those same things.
(24:00):
What is it about us that makesus uniquely capable?
What makes the performance ofour organization different than
other similar organizations inwhat we do?
How do we answer thosequestions?
And over time we came torealize, as a management team,
all of those very things thatAlan was the first one to say
out loud.
You don't challenge the cultureinternally.
(24:21):
That's disloyalty to the team,it's disloyalty to the guys that
came before us.
You know, in our case, you know, chris kraft and gene kranz put
us on the moon.
How dare you say right culture,is that right?
Yeah, but we let some, we letsome bad behaviors creep in,
just as the show program hadleading up to columbia.
We saw similar things insidemission control.
(24:44):
The difference was we care Ishouldn't say we cared, they
didn't care.
It's not fair.
We saw it and the fact that wesaw it, we care enough to not
ignore it and just assume thatwe are the gods of man's
spaceflight.
This stuff doesn't matter,which I will admit to you that
for a NASA engineer, especiallyfor somebody who spent a career
in mission operations, right,the way we would refer to that
(25:07):
is we took the touchy-feelybullshit serious.
We had been trained not to Imean, it wasn't like I came up
with that term myself.
We were told hey, don't forgetto dance with the one that brung
you.
You're really good at what youdo because of your rocket
science.
All that touchy-feely bullshitdoesn't matter, and what we
realized was you know, that'sthe very stuff that got in the
(25:28):
shuttle program's way that ledto Columbia, stuff that got in
the shuttle programs way thatled to columbia.
That is the very thing that wehave now let get in our way
inside the mission operationsorganization.
Yeah, so I think to a greatextent my experience during the
return to flight uh, helped,helped make me, I think, um more
(25:48):
attuned to seeing this and notblowing it off because it's not
technical, it's not the rocketscience, and so I don't care.
I'm the head guy at the head ofthe table, so I get to make
decisions and I don't reallycare about that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Well, there's a lot of smart people at NASA, but the
bottom line is they're people,and, of course, the words that's
the way we've always donethings around here are probably
the most dangerous words in allof business, and NASA as well.
Wouldn't you say things whenthey?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
established some process actually had a reason to
do it that way, but then youkind of forget about it and you
just kind of keep doing the samething because that's the way
you've always done it.
Well, if that's what you'realways going to do, then sure,
(26:40):
keep doing it that way.
But, as Marshall Goldsmith wouldsay well, got you here, won't
get you there, that's it.
So you got to think real hardabout it.
And it's that mindset of justlooking in and just assuming
well, this is what we've alwaysdone, so this is how we'll
always do it.
That's one of the ways youcreep along and stop asking the
whys, stop having the rigor,because, well, we know it's
(27:03):
right, we know we're goodbecause we're mission operations
and everything we do is gold.
Well, no, that's the recipe forthe next accident is going to
be our fault.
We can't let that happen.
And so we learned how to dothings like how do you enable
all of the actually anybody atany level of the management, or
even at the working level in themission operations director?
(27:25):
We went far enough that it waseasy for anybody at any level to
raise their hand and say Paul,I think what you just said was
wrong.
I think we need to come backand have that conversation again
.
And they knew they weren'trisking their career to do it.
In fact, the ones that would beat risk are the ones that, after
they let me screw something upafterwards, say in the hallway
(27:47):
well, that was wrong, we allknew that was going to be a
mistake.
I guess Paul was the only onethat didn't know.
That's the guy that I'm goingto fire, not for saying that,
but for not having the courageto speak up if he actually knew.
And the way you get there isget everyone aligned on our core
purpose as an organization.
In fact, I have a speech that Ifirst gave a number of years
(28:09):
ago.
That's called Lead Proudly toFailure.
And it's all about this point.
And that is forget being proudof who we are.
Be proud of how we do what wedo In the case of mission
operations.
We exist to protect theastronauts, accomplish the
mission and not damage thehardware.
(28:30):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
That's our entire job there you go, and then wrapped
around.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
That is now.
How do we do business in a waythat we make sure that we're
making right decisions for rightreasons?
We're not letting opinion creepin or we don't have the courage
to speak up because the uppermanagement has said they want
this to happen, but we thinkthat's the wrong thing.
We'll say that it's incumbentupon us to say that, just like
(28:58):
in the control room, that onesmart engineer who could have
kept me, as a flight director,from making a mistake that puts
a crew at risk, if he doesn'tspeak up, it's not my fault.
I was dumb enough, I didn'tknow we were making a mistake.
The one guy in the room didn'tspeak up.
He didn't learn what ourculture is all about and the
culture there and this is whatwe really learned.
It's just kind of the magicthat I helped bring from the
(29:19):
control room into our managementranks although, again, to be
fair, alan was the one that gotus to see this in the first
place.
So I like giving credit wherecredit's due.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Another big point, right right there.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
But the whole idea that we have to have the courage
to speak up and say I know weare doing a mistake and if every
one of us has the courage to dothat, accidents like Columbia,
accidents like Challenger aresignificantly less likely to
happen, as are other things thatare perhaps less impressive in
(29:54):
other businesses.
I actually had somebody ask mein an audience one time how does
this apply to my business?
Because we don't have rockets,we're not going to blow up
rockets or kill astronauts.
I said, well, is it possible?
And actually the person who'sasked me this was in their
business office.
I said do you have businessprocesses in your company that,
if you don't manage themcorrectly, you could impact cost
(30:14):
to customers, lose customersover your costs or your
mismanagement of money, maybeeven put your company out of
business?
Oh yeah, that could happen.
But there you go.
My guess is, to your companythat's going to feel just as
traumatic as losing yourastronauts.
So you have to frame it in thatway.
What are the losses?
We can't afford to do, and arewe willing now to lose fear of
(30:36):
those, to give us the courage tospeak up and say something that
would otherwise make meuncomfortable to say?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, absolutely, and along with that, though, you've
got to be the leader thatallows that to happen.
You're confident enough inyourself that you create the
culture.
That that's okay.
You don't think it'squestioning your leadership or
your knowledge or your skill.
It's doing the right thing.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
And you know and the hard part there is, it has to be
.
That message has to be sent anddemonstrated from the top down.
You cannot bubble that up fromthe bottom, because power sits
at the head of the table.
Everybody knows it.
Even if, as a leader, you'renot beating everybody over the
head with it, it doesn't changethe fact that the dynamic in the
(31:18):
room is you have the power toget everybody promoted.
You have the power to movemoney in the organization to
approve programs, cancelprograms into projects, whatever
that is, and it does affect thedynamic.
But you can, in fact, if you'revery deliberate about this every
time you engage with your team,send that message down.
It's okay for any of you totell me that.
(31:40):
If you think I'm making amistake and I am expecting you
to weigh in on every decision wemake which doesn't mean every
one of you is expected to be anexpert at all things Not
realistic and it's not evennecessary but if you have a
point of view on it or there'ssome part of it that it just
doesn't click for you doesn'tseem like we're making the right
(32:00):
decision, say it.
It'll enable the experts aroundthe team to then weigh in and
answer the male and answer thewise, and then, once we've done
that, let's move on and let'sget to that next decision.
You can do that as a leader,but, boy, it takes discipline
every single day to do thatbecause what?
they are looking for, whetherthey're conscious of it or not.
(32:22):
Is that indication of?
Well, he may say he wants that,but did you see how he raped
that guy over the coals?
Who dared to say that to him or, worse, fired somebody who
challenged him on something.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Then it'll never happen again.
They'll never bring it up again.
We're getting near the end ofour time, I'm sorry to say so.
I know there's going to be alot of NASA and space
enthusiasts watching this, sofor them specifically, nasa's
role has changed.
Briefly, what is NASA's rolenow?
Has it really changed or hasn'tit?
What do you see?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
You know it's kind of a mixed bag.
You know NASA is stilldeveloping new its own flight
hardware, new big rocket, newbig spacecraft.
When I say they are developing,they are managing the
development project, but, likemost NASA equipment, it's being
built by companies like Boeingand Lockheed.
They have different contractstructure with some companies
like SpaceX and Blue Origin,where NASA has a less hands-on
(33:18):
role in the development and, insome cases, less hands-on role
with the flight operations, andthis is kind of a new thing
that's getting the attention ofthe federal government.
Maybe we should be doing less,not just in NASA.
Maybe we ought to go back andbe more like that in some of the
DOD work.
To be fair, though, the DODtried some of this in the
(33:39):
operational environment 20 yearsago, 30 years ago, and found
out in a hurry.
They lost all kinds ofexpertise and found themselves
not in a good position to managewhat some of those people were
doing because of that, and theyhad to take steps back away from
it.
The real problem that NASA'sdealing with is, over the
decades, their developmentprograms became extraordinarily
(34:02):
expensive with these big costplus contracts, but I would say,
as a former NASA guy, thatlargely happened because NASA
didn't manage them.
Well, nasa didn't hold thecontractor's feet in the fire to
deliver on contract, deliver oncost or on schedule.
They kept giving them highaward fees anyway, because we're
all family.
You got to take care of thefamily and you get what you
(34:24):
incentivize in the contract.
If NASA had done a better jobmanaging those contracts, they
would not have had that samerunaway cost growth.
If they did, on some program,they had options to end that
contract and start again, whichthey also didn't want to do for
other reasons.
And it's not easy to do that.
But if you're never willing totake any of those steps, then of
(34:47):
course costs are going to goout of control and the
contractor performance may godownhill.
Okay, I have said for some time, you don't solve that by just
stepping back and saying, hey,industry, you just do develop
all of it and go fly home right,right, so you were managing
those contracts with it, so weare unfortunately out of time.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
This is fantastic stuff and I know especially I
mean there's all the space folksthat are watching this,
listening to this, are going tolove the space details and the
business people and team membersare going to love the
leadership principles.
What's just something to leaveeverybody with as we close down
for the day.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
You know, if I was going to sum it all up and I've
said this a few times already,but if I would sum it all up,
the most important thing that Ilearned to take very seriously
every day as a leader was askmyself why, on every decision,
ask the people working for me,make recommendations, why, and
make sure they can ask me thosesame whys and hold myself
(35:46):
accountable to be able to answerthose whys.
And if I can't, or if we can't,maybe we're not ready to take
that risk.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Huge advice at the end of this podcast.
I know, once again, there's alot of people out there, first
of all, whose lives need to comeback, whose businesses need to
come back.
They're part of a charitableorganization, maybe a civic club
or something that needs acomeback, and I think that
Paul's words there areabsolutely critical all the way
through here.
(36:13):
So go back, listen to thisagain if you need to take notes.
Ask the questions.
Why change the culture?
Allow people to speak up, andthen you can have your own
Comeback Chronicle.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
So that's it for today's episode of the Comeback
Chronicles.
Head on over to Apple Podcastsor wherever you listen and
subscribe to the show.
One lucky listener every singleweek that posts a review on
Apple Podcasts will win a chancein the grand prize drawing to
win a $25,000 private VIP datewith Terry O Fossum himself.
(36:49):
Be sure to head on over toComebackChroniclesPodcastcom and
pick up a free copy of Terry'sgift and join us on the next
episode.
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