Week Five - NASA Culture Change

Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.
- William Pollard

This week was a module of enlightenment for me; the focus on accountability, the ability to accurately analyze the performance gap in situations, as well as all of the key elements used towards making an accurate diagnosis of the current state of affairs within a troubled organization was fantastic…I really connected with how we have to ensure we focus on the entire organization as a whole system and how “…every member of an organization participates in developing a vision and improving the corporate culture” (Brown, 2011, p. 116). It is chapters and modules such as this that make me think…PhD? Yeah, probably not, but it is always nice to dream!

Noting the above, I was also shocked on what we uncovered and research showed regarding NASA! I am not sure why, but basically seeing that their lack of awareness towards what was detrimental to the organization and the gap between espoused values versus their written code of safety was really eye-opening to say the least. This week, we watched a C-SPAN video noting Sean O’Keefe, Administrator at NASA, addressing the culture, the gaps, the lack of mutual respect, and the challenges facing the organization that contributed towards the Columbia disaster.

I do think he came across as genuine with his message of wanting everyone to help contribute towards making NASA “…a better, smarter, safer, stronger agency…” (OKeefe, 2004). Being able to admit where the deficiencies are, all the way up to their leadership, shows reflection of the issues, the “signals that were being sent”, as well as resolving the issues that were raised ultimately led to the consequence and failure of functions in which contributed to the Columbia disaster (OKeefe, 2004).

O’Keefe talks about how there is a true and genuine element of family between one another, and they need to continue to build upon them exponentially and throughout each research location. This is where NASA can excel…it’s not bad, “…it’s not nearly good enough” and they want to do something to change the level of this, and the priority of a culture of safety in which is “…embedded in our organization…”and is linked to every thread of what we do each and every day at NASA, but when the employees were asked in anonymous surveys, it turns out that we weren’t doing as well as we all thought (OKeefe, 2004). Again, identifying the gap between perception and the reality we all live in is a case for every leader to take pause periodically and self reflect on what is really happening versus what we think we are doing.

He takes the approach that it takes everyone, including him, to make this happen…and how it starts with him first. I loved that he owned his portion and what he has done to contribute to this mindset and why he wants it to be changed. He was able to articulate the vision of what is…to what will be, and that gets an audience hooked every single time! He is committing what he will do, what he is willing to sacrifice, and what he is willing to contribute to help make this change a reality.

Overall, he articulated what they problem was and is, why it has happened, what can be done to change it, and how NASA will go about bringing the change into being part of its new culture. He took ownership, admitted what he contributed towards, but more importantly, engaged the audience with what he was going to do immediately, and already started doing prior to the conference, to change their course of actions.

This reminded me of areas discussed in chapter four last week; it was a very charismatic model that NASA operated under. They believed they were doing well, most likely because employees were “…looking for cues from their leaders…” (Brown, 2011, p. 101) when discussing amongst themselves. They tended to learn to operate also in a more apathetic driven mode because although there were some willing to go against the grain and verbalize concerns in their areas, those viewpoints were seemed to be dismissed and subsequently others may have learned the “why even bother” behavior (Brown, 2011, p. 101).

They found more importantly, that there was a great performance gap between what we think our values are and how NASA walked the walk. Respect for each other is one of the critical elements lacking from their current culture; the support they provide one another, including their leadership, is lacking and the survey results showed it. What is the “absolute imperative” of what we must do and how we must do it; he talks about how to change the NASA mindset to a positive agenda using the term “yes, if…” instead of “no, because…” (OKeefe, 2004) and puts “the burden of proof on others…” to what can start to change our cultural approach.

Going forward, there are small ways to identify those priorities, that identify both the positive and negative ways, in which if change doesn’t happen, what will become of our reality and how our approach towards our teams and our leadership driven style. I think more importantly, O’Keefe stressed the importance of how we go about respecting others within our units and organizations, and how this impacts our abilities to further progress our goals; without demonstrating respect for one another, outside our area of expertise, we have no foundational basis on which we can work with. We have to learn to recognize what others do right, not just what they do wrong…we have to enrich our followers by being able to identify what we all do well, and what we need to do better in order to get to the next level. I like his idea about “yes, if…” versus the “no, because…” approach because it brings about learning to retrain our thought process to think on a positive note, rather than being automatically closed minded towards what is being presented before us.

Overall, this week opened my eyes to the downfalls of being functionally dysfunctional. I liken it to being a functional alcoholic. The alcoholic thinks because they go to work and don’t have an issue, that when they are at home passed out on the carpet, all is fine. NASA thought they were the epitome of safety cultures and technological breakthroughs. They even had surveys to “prove” they were one of the best places to work…what they missed the mark on was what questions they asked and how the employees answered in confidence. As I mentioned in one of my discussion posts this week, it all lies in what we are trying to uncover in our questions. If you ask someone why they are resigning from their position, they may respond with better wages or hours or shorter commute. If you ask them why they started looking for a new place to work, you may find out because of management, performance gaps, or other underlying issues that are truly at the heart of your turnover issues. As leaders, we have to learn to ask the right questions, but more importantly, be willing to take actions on the answers we uncover.


Until we blog again!

References


Brown, D. R. (2011). An Experminetal Approach to Organizational Development, Eighth Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.


OKeefe, S. (2004, April 13). NASA Cultural Changes. Retrieved from c-span.org: http://www.c-span.org/video/?181348-1/nasa-cultural-changes%20