Thank you Delia for summarizing the outcome of the sustainability panel at the 3rd Annual AIAA Space Exploration Conference. I would have loved to have been there in person but I was attending the Project Management Challenge (PMC) 2008 in Daytona, Florida. Thanks to Twitter, I felt like I was at both

It’s been very interesting to watch the Generation Y message make it’s way through the NASA world, up and down the lines of management everywhere. Most exciting is receiving emails from leaders around the agency and watching the NASA organization flatten (a little) before our eyes! I personally never imagined at the beginning of all this that a) NASA would listen, and b) that NASA would be so passionate about improving, growing and changing. I guess looking back, it only makes sense - NASA is filled with thousands of employees who are extremely brilliant, want to participate and who are here to change the world through exploration - no matter what generation.

One of the reasons we had created the presentation in its current form is that we wanted this to be about more than just the four original authors. It was made so that anyone could take it and share it with others. It talks about a strategy, not the specific tactics, that are important if we are going to address the communications gap we have with the American public, as well as our own employees. This presentation is a resultant of hundreds of people who gave feedback, comments, and advice - and as evidenced this past week, the conversation continues.

I had the opportunity to participate as an audience member at a session in Daytona organized by Kelli McCoy from Kennedy Space Center. The session was called the “The Next Generation of NASA Project Manager’s” and came out of her independent observation that we need to start having this discussion at NASA. Kelli did an amazing job pulling together the panel, facilitating the discussion, and fielding some good questions from the audience. The rest of this post will summarize my observations of themes raised during that session as well as a few email discussions I’ve had throughout this week.

Observations from PMC2008 Session and Follow-Up Discussions

The panel was made up of three younger Gen Y’ers and two senior leaders with insights into developing future project managers. The discussion had many more themes that I’ll cover here. Overall the panel agreed, and then re-iterated over and over again, that younger employees are really the dynamic force in a creative and innovative work environment and are absolutely critical in terms of the influx of new technology and inspiration. There was a short discussion on the “value” of the employees because of their limited “experience”. I disagree with the perception presented by the senior leaders that to solve tough problems you need a big hammer called “experience” to actually solve them. I think we underestimate, as an agency, the competence of people fresh out of college who may even be more dedicated than some of the most competitive and determined full-timers around.

This led to the next discussion topic on diversity and why we actually need people at all age levels at NASA. This is a topic that we’ll write more about in the near future - but the statistics prove that age diversity at NASA is very skewed. The workforce, despite the best efforts of three NASA administrators, continues to age. Middle management tend to nod their head when directed to think long term about “sustainability” but when it comes down to filling a critical hire spot, many times it’s easier to opt for the “experienced” middle aged contractor who’s been there and done that. Thus, there has been a rapid rise in the average age of the agency, which, as a brilliant HQ friend of mine put it, “actually means that in 1990 we were hiring 20-30-something Boomers and now we’re hiring 40-something Boomers. If we take age out of it, what we’ve been doing the past 25 years is saying only Boomers can be space people. We hire Boomers, give buyouts to the Silent Generation before them, and don’t hire anyone X or Millennial.” This is a major problem that the agency needs to address immediately.

One of the final questions to the panel during the session was “how do we attract young people to small NASA centers like Huntsville when we are competing against places like California and DC?” I think the answer here is simple. If you have the right leaders and culture in your organization, you’ll attract the right people. If Huntsville, Alabama was known for it’s innovative, hands-on projects - for giving young employees high reward opportunities - for empowering a workforce to make a difference - and giving them the right tools to make their visions a reality - I’d probably put in transfer myself! It’s not hard to attract people if what you are doing is exciting and relevant to them. And as one panelist pointed out, fixing the reward-incentive structure within the government wouldn’t hurt either - I don’t think too many on the bottom of the GS scale disagree that it’s an archaic system that really needs to be addressed. But that’s a whole other conversation to have another day.

A gold nugget from one of the senior members on the panel was his reminder that history is a good indicator of the future. His recommendation was to take note of NASA history so as to not make the same mistake again. I’d add that this brings up the immense value of knowledge transfer through mentorships. If you are a young person and don’t have a mentor that is a senior level leader, now’s the time to take action and identify someone who can fill that role.

Invaluable Feedback

We’ve received a ton of feedback from senior leaders at many centers who want to encourage their employees to join the conversation. It’s really inspiring - and on a personal level really encourages me that we have amazing leaders at NASA who truly “get it“. We have also received some invaluable inputs, feedback and comments to the presentation and over the next few weeks, we’ll incorporate those into another revision and post it here. We are also working on a follow-up presentation that we’ll ask for your help with soon!

At JSC, we have been blessed by some great mentors in our center director - Mike Coats - and the Advanced Planning Office, particularly Steven Gonzales and Barbara Zelon. They have facilitated a very open and collaborative environment for us to develop and share our thoughts. They’ve actually encouraged us to take this a step further and engage others in the discussion at JSC to talk about a vision for the future - about what the NASA we are going to work at in 20 years looks like with the hopes of focusing on the immediate steps we need to take. Based on a number of conversations I’ve had in the past couple of weeks - particularly with the folks at NGEC-2 and part of the CoLab team - I think this boils down to a strategy of “participatory exploration”, engaging your workforce and empowering them to use their talents to make the organization better. Ames is already moving down this road and has invented CoLab - which is a way to engage and inspire others to participate in the NASA mission. Ames Center Director Pete Worden has been extremely supportive of the efforts at his center and has a lot of insight into all of this. I have also heard that the Glenn Research Center (Woodrow Wilson) and Kennedy Space Center (Bill Parsons) are very interested in this discussion as well. Ultimately, each center is very different and has a unique personality - and I think everyone has something to contribute in this conversation. The next step is for each center to facilitate a conversation in their own way and bring together talented personnel to talk about what the vision is for their NASA and then empower those same employees and others who want to participate to utilize their talents to make their organization better. We also need to engage and encourage the public to join in on this conversation - and I really believe this website will be a major way to make that happen. Together, as leaders from every generation share what we learn, develop a forward plan, and break down our organizational barriers, I think we (NASA) will really make progress in inspiring a new generation of leaders, growing as an organization, and leading the rest of the government as an innovative, participatory, transparent agency.

Finally, we’ve received a ton of very supportive emails from a number of different folks throughout the agency. Here’s a summary of a few of those emails (I edited most of them to keep the original author confidential):

• Just saw your Gen Y pitch. Stunning, and right on the money. Of course I’d expect no less from you all. Congratulations!

• I just listened to Kristen give your presentation to the Exploration Conference here in Denver. First to Kristen, great job on your presentation. Your delivery skills are fantastic. To the team, what a great message. I will admit, as an (older guy) I don’t completely get it, but I want to. I think you have hit on something we - NASA - should be investing intellectual capital as well as dollars to find solutions. Anyway, if any of you have any ideas how I could engage in getting discussions and thoughts working (in my organization) I would love to hear from you. Not only to find opportunities for the Gen Y’ers I already employ but how we might create a work environment that would be the type of place this generation would like to work at.

• I just saw your presentation. From one old retired NASA guy, great job. I will be interested in watching how the Agency responses. The four of you gave the Agency a lot to think about. Please pass on to the team my appreciation of your efforts.

• I will admit that I did not stay for your evening presentation about Gen Y at the Next Gen conference, but I did just check it out on Loretta’s blog. Love it. Seriously, that is great! Also, I know I’m far away a kind of unplugged from NASA right now, but I would love to do anything to help you out! I have been saying the same things for years when people ask my why I left civil service Anyway, I hope all is well! Please keep in touch and again, great job on the presentation!

• I just wanted to send that over to you guys - congrats on all your hard work! I took a look at the presentation, and as I told Garret - I absolutely loved it! You guys did an amazing job putting facts and figures together to make a presentation that is representative of one of the very things Gen Y needs to get across to NASA - the use of new technologies in reaching our peers. I am really excited about coming to JSC in a little less than a month, and I can’t wait to help out with this movement, as help is needed.

• Saw your presentation on NASA Watch - couldn’t agree more. (I’ll even forgive you for suggesting that NASA replace my beloved PC with a Mac…) I’m at a NASA Explorer School team right now and they just showed us some Vomit Comet videos that the production staff put together for themselves that were way more awesome than any of the b-roll they distribute to the teams to use for their outreach… All I could wonder is “why isn’t this stuff on You Tube?” Maybe one day you’ll have the ISS astronauts keeping and commenting on blogs (without them being edited and sanitized for a week by public affairs before posting)… One step at a time I guess.

And with that, I want to wrap up this ridiculously long post. Each of us can do our part to make NASA better, improve the agency, contribute to the overall mission of the American space program, and help make space exploration a possibility! It’s amazing what an entire generation can do, one step at a time!