Why
did NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe address NASA employees to describe the plan
to bring about proposed changes to NASA's culture? O'Keefe emphasized that since its inception in 1958, NASA has accomplished many
great scientific and technological feats in air and space. He indicated
that there are many positive aspects to the culture at NASA including:
technical and engineering excellence, an entrepreneurial spirit of teamwork and
pride, and a positive-can-do-attitude and approach to task achievement. He
emphasized NASA has the right people with the dedication, focus, fire, passion
and drive for success. He stated NASA is on the cusp of being a stellar
exemplar organization IF we choose to do this and act. Unfortunately, NASA's
tenure has also included tragedy too. e.g., Columbia (2003) and Challenger (1986).
Was
he believable? Is it important whether he appeared to be believable? I do not
think he was believable because of several factors. First and most important is
credibility. Due to these two huge tragedies, NASA has lost considerable
credible issues. Second, O'Keefe's body language and voice left me (and
probably the public too) with the impression of "laissez-fare" and
not challenging the "status-quo" of the federal government
"greatest agency." Third, he boasted and bragged of NASA being the
"greatest government agency" and "the leader of the pack."
In addition, my perception was that this was a public relations (PR) boost that
NASA was being "proactive" and had an action plan in place.
Why did
he talk about NASA values? O'Keefe emphasized three features (values) for great
organizations: 1. respect for each other 2. exemplar organization for safety 3.
someone notices both positive and negative for the highest rated federal
government agency. Some improvement is needed in leadership because it is not
as good as it should be. NASA need to focus on how we communicate with each
other. It all begins with me. We all need to get out of our offices (even
though we are too busy) and walk around,
interact, and communicate with the workforce. Tom Peters (researcher, management
and leadership guru and speaker) calls this MBWA - management by wandering
around. From a critical thinking perspective, there are several
"paradigms" mental models mindsets that need to be addressed. Shift
from a "no - because" culture to a "yes - if" culture
because it leaves open opportunities for improvement. e.g., safety.
What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in
your career? The most important lesson learned is to never make the same mistake
twice. Unfortunately for NASA, this happened which impacted their credibility and
the lives and families of employees. The second take away application is to fix
the process (including culture with organization structure) and root cause and not
"symptoms." And third, execution of the plan was poor due to a lack of
project management skills along with critical thinking "paradigms" and
"group think." On Feb 1, 2003, the Space
Shuttle Columbia and crew of seven were lost during return to earth. A group of
distinguished experts was appointed to lead the Columbia Accident Investigation
Board (CAIB), and this group spent about six months conducting a root cause
analysis of the accident. The CAIB findings indicated that NASA's history and
culture contributed as much to the Columbia accident as any technical failure.
As a result of the CAIB, NASA established the goal of transforming its
organizational and safety culture. There is a very important question to
ask. Can negative patterns repeat and why do they repeat? For example, is it
true that as the press concluded after Columbia (2003), that the lessons of
Challenger (1986) weren't learned with an action plan? In a similar scenario,
the Commission's 1986 report with "Findings" and
"Recommendations" they located cause primarily in individual
mistakes, errors in judgment, flawed analysis, flawed decision-making and communication
failures. The findings about schedule pressures and safety structure were
attributed to flawed decision-making, not by engineers or middle managers, but
by NASA leaders. A plan was put in place to adjust decision-making and creating
structure changes in safety. NASA acted on these recommendations from the
Commission so we could say that the lessons were learned. (NASA, 2015)
There is an additional lesson: we
see how hard it is to learn and implement the lessons of an organization system
failure even when they were identified by the CAIB Report. NASA leaders had
difficulty integrating new structures with existing parts of the process and
operation. Cultural change and how to go about it eluded them. Even with BST as
a NASA OD consultant, NASA found the recommendations puzzling because they had
seen their system working and operating well. Even when the lessons are
learned, negative patterns can still repeat. But even when everything possible
is done, we cannot have mistake-free organizations because system effects will
produce unanticipated consequences. (NASA, 2015)
References
C-SPAN - NASA Cultural Changes (2004).
Retrieved from
http://www.c-span.org/video/?181348-1/nasa-cultural-changes
NASA (2015). Available http://www.nasa.gov/
No comments:
Post a Comment