NASA has been working toward increasing public understanding of what it does and why it is relevant to the public. NASA has created a message which intends to bring this understanding home and succinctly encapsulate everything that it does. While I am a large advocate for creating a guiding coalition, creating vision, communicating the vision, encourage action and celebrating short-term wins for internal change (see Kotter’s Harvard Business Review Article, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail“), externally, I believe NASA should focus on output.
I recall seeing historic television clips of Apollo astronauts in parades rolling through the streets in convertibles. These were heroes accomplishing extraordinary tasks. While I was not involved in this program, it seems to have been a celebration of feats performed and needed no script. The voice of the Apollo program was not the NASA spokesperson, it was Walter Cronkite. NASA focused on achieving its mandate and let everyone else do the talking.
If recent history is an indication of the future, NASA’s budget will not change drastically. NASA must operate to fulfill its executive goals within its congressional mandate; however, it is up to NASA employees how to do so. From conversations I have had with other NASA employees, there used to be more trust and many more opportunities for employees to innovate, work on hardware, and conduct experiments. I look around the agency today, and many of us are working on proposals and managing contractors rather than bending metal, conducting experiments and learning.
We have $17 Billion budget; let’s use it wisely! Let us encourage our employees to be in action with their innovative ideas and projects. Let’s be an engineering agency, and internally attract the workforce which will create the vehicles, experiments, and technologies that will propel humanity to become a space faring civilization. Let’s focus on market failures within the space sector and have the government invest in areas which enable development.
Let’s speak strategically with our actions, and focus on output.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:55 am
Robbie, this is an absolutely excellent post. We were in a meeting today with management from the Missions Operations Directorate at Johnson Space Center. MOD is great example of what you are talking about here. They are known for being very focused on the mission - and continually setting the bar in terms of delivering the unexpected. Because of their excellence, people connect. Their actions bring measurable output. It’s a pretty awe-inspiring place to work (and visit).
The picture above made me think, I can’t think of the one astronaut currently in the agency that I’ve ever seen ride in a parade! If and when I become an astronaut, I guarantee that I will ride in a parade in a convertible. I think I’ll start at the 4th of July parade in my hometown in North Dakota.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I think this is a great post. One thing I’d suggest with all those billions that would further the cause of getting people (especially our generation) interested in NASA and space travel is a huge PR campaign. Getting promotional materials made, having ads on TV and the net, getting speakers to make appearances at schools (from grade-school to universities). Imagine if NASA was as effective for recruiting as the military that spends enormous amounts of money on PR.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
NASA’s future lies outside of NASA’s security fences.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I met with someone from the Advanced Planning Office today who is keenly involved in how JSC will approach these issues. One of the things he told me was that their research of highly successful corporations shows that they tend to focus on an area and excel both at accomplishing the object of their focus and communicating its value. I agree with Nick that MOD is a great example of that internally. I spent two of my three summer intern tours there and I absolutely loved it.
So, that means that we may need to be prepared to tighten our center foci - focus our output, while improving interconnectivity between centers to leverage both our technical goals and our external message. The Advanced Planning Blog mentions today that we also need to be more willing to learn from failures, instead of resting on our successes. I think that ties in very closely with your message here about making NASA a more internally dynamic and innovative organization.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
@ Schingler- I have to say that I do agree with what you are trying to say in your post, but was put off by the comment : “I look around the agency today, and many of us are working on proposals and managing contractors rather than bending metal, conducting experiments and learning.”
There is an interesting interface regarding the contractor/civil servant relationship that has come from the Apollo days, which quite frankly prevents anyone from moving forward if the relationship started on a negative frame of mind. We are all trying to work towards the same goals, yet contractors seemed to be viewed in a lesser light. I guess what struck me about the comment is that I know a lot of people, contractor and civil servant, who have the heart, drive, and passion to conduct the work that NASA is trying to do, but there is a lot of others who are deadwood…civil servant and contractor alike. The plus side of being a contractor is we can fire or layoff our deadwood…such is not the case for Civil Servants.
@ Nick what hometown in NoDak are you from?!? I like to go to the Minot parade at the state fair every year…maybe I’ll see you there!
April 10th, 2008 at 1:34 am
You Gen Y folks need to move beyond pointing out problems and differences with your elders on Powerpoint charts and start offering solutions. You need to move from diffuse concepts and focus on concrete deliverables and products. Otherwise you are just the latest NASA management fad along with TQM, FBC, ISO 9000 Franklin planners, and crackberrys.
You got senior management’s attention - but they now wonder if there is any “there” there. You have a chance to make an impression at SSC in the SMC with Griffin et al. Don’t blow it by re-presenting the Gen Y pitch everyone has already seen.
* Do you want the entire agency to change its way of doing things to suit you? If so, why is it that your generation expects not to be asked to adapt to the way that others do things? Why are you different? Why should people just hand over the reigns? That is the impression many have. More people ignore what you have to say than listen to you - so you have an uphill battle ahead.
What is broken, can you prove that it is broken, how can you fix it and why is your fix better than someone else’s - or for that matter does the problem need to be fixed?
* Big deal - you multitask with different toys. Studies show, however, that you are no more efficient overall than your elders - indeed, you tend to do each of those tasks less efficiently than those who do things in serial fashion. Provide concrete examples - with data - how the things that you propose have already shown increased productivity elsewhere and why they should be tried at NASA.
* You claim that all these Gen Y tools and behaviors will improve how NASA interacts with the public. Specifically, provide example(s) as to how these Gen Y Web 2.0 tools have already enhanced NASA’s ability to do its job and/or have demonstrably affected the public’s understanding of what NASA does in a lasting and measurable way.
Its up to you to come up with a plan - a plan that addresses a problem - a real problem that actually needs fixing, suggested solutions on how to do so, and ways to measure effectiveness of the solutions as you address the problem. Otherwise this is just arm waving.
You folks need to focus and think strategically. The agency is not going to wait very long for you figure out what it is you have to say and what it is you want to do. Nor are they going to just let you change the rules - rules they are comfortable with - unless you give them a darn good reason to do so.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Oh yes the “Us vs you” thing that is pervasive in NASA Gen Y presentations turns folks at HQ off really fast. Every generation is different that than the previous one - or the next one. Big deal.
Making fun of Boomers and their Franklin Planners and how Gen Y folks use computers all the time in meetings while older folks don’t annoys prospective audiences as well.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:59 am
One easy thing that can be done in the short term to gain instant access to lots of would be interested public is to create some web widgets or facebook apps to dynamically display NASA News, images, job postings, etc. Search for anything space related in the facebook apps page and you will come up with a couple of broken apps and not much else.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Keith,
I know for a fact that the group here at JSC is doing precisely what you suggest - focusing and thinking strategically - and is intimately involved with the Advanced Planning Office’s efforts to build a coherent, achievable vision for the center.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
John: good idea except I and others already can - or are working on - doing that. NASA needs to do the things that others cannot.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Justin:
“to build a coherent, achievable vision for the center.”
This should be about “NASA” - not JSC (i.e. “the center”). That is the problem with NASA today.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Keith,
We have to crawl before we can run, wouldn’t you agree? Or, if you’d prefer, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
I think that proving the merit of this approach in developing the vision for JSC’s future will translate into more trust for making the necessary transformations at the agency level. We’ve got to make it work at a smaller scale first before we can ramp it up.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Justin: I know y’all mean well, but it would seem that you are just recreating a new version of an old problem at NASA. If you folks truly have a new way of doing things then it should transcend center politics and be applicable from the onset to all of NASA.
You are developing JSC’s vision - not NASA’s.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Keith,
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree, then. We are thinking about solutions and strategic direction, we do not expect all of NASA to bend to our whim without just cause, and we are operating at a scope that is supported by NASA management with the expectation that we will move forward.
We have to start somewhere. It’s not going to happen overnight and we have to make our case that there is value in our ideas. That is a “political” reality that we have to roll with. You said yourself that we have an uphill battle. I’m not sure how you expect us to win it without the credibility that will come from being involved in the current process.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
What is this “expect all of NASA to bend to our whim” and “We” you folks keep mentioning? Are you some kind of organization?
You do know that people at HQ read all this stuff … including postings here ….
April 10th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
What I think Justin is saying here is that no one is expecting NASA to change over night. We’re merely making suggestions based on our view, which we think is a valid view (we being those people who are a part of Gen-Y and have a stake in how things go at NASA, be it civil servant, contractor or just the general public).
I also don’t believe that starting with JSC is necessarily a bad thing; change has to start somewhere, and it’s just more convenient for this to start with JSC because most of the Gen-Y people associated with the presentations are located at JSC.
Personally, I don’t believe any of us is looking to change only JSC; the point (from where I stand) of all of this is to just get our voice heard and our viewpoint considered during this time of monumental change at NASA.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
@Kieth
I think these are great points. However I feel like your comments are a bit in the negative “get real” tone. I don’t think the answer to any issue is to throw multitasking inefficiency at it. This is an issue that is plaguing all generations that are adapting to our highly technologized (made a new word) lives. Obviously society is in the growing pains of learning how to properly manage our attention and create healthy habits in the midst of ubiquitous technology and media. This isn’t the fault of any specific generation but the natural result of when we introduce new technology–proper adaptation must occur, the psyche has to learn to deal with it in a proper way.
I think what you bring up though is finding proper technological solutions. Solutions that aren’t superfluous and that aren’t distracting. How will the world function in 50 years? I imagine that to some degree (and I think a large one) we’ll be using groupware (project management) and social networks in all sort of ways to increase collaboration, creativity, competitiveness, and productivity. I don’t know how those things will be configured but I’m doubtless they’ll be employed in some fashion. If not by us, then by someone else. But it isn’t an “if” but a “when.”
So the challenge is finding the right tools for the job, looking through case studies, finding the right applications of technology, and also studying how groups such as NASA organize themselves and work.
The first phase I’d imagine would be to first augment existing workflows efficiently, next would be to to start experimenting with new workflows and interactions in non-mission critical areas. There are sites such as spacecollective.org that invite passionate users (you have to be invited to join) to contribute to projects. There are other models such as kluster.com that allow people to open up their projects to others for feedback and participation.
In these scenarios we can see that there is more than one way to construct a social hierarchy on the web, that not in all cases is it Myspace anarchy. Trust is the currency and I think there are ample ways to create dynamic and organized communities of passionate people collaborating with each other, private space ventures, and to public ones such as NASA.
In cases where this is already working is in regards to the galaxy identification project at http://www.galaxyzoo.org/ which crowd-sourced the work on the internet. There’s also a number of projects designed to foster a community of home-grown planet hunters.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Paul:
WRT the “get real” tone - it is quite intentional.
Thinking of how the world will “function in 50 years is great” - but it is irrelevant to extant NASA management that has to deal with how to conduct programs in the here and now - or a decade or so at most in the future. NASA is already canceling programs of value now in FY 2008 in order to pay for the Ares and CEV. Why would they suddenly go for something that is relevant to FY 2058?
You guys need to pick something that is needed in the current time frame and show how you can fix it and/or make it much much better than the traditional approaches would do. “Good enough” is often all that NASA can afford, sadly. You need to show decision makers how “better” is preferable - and worth the investment - and you need metrics and deliverables whereby to prove this point. You only get that by DOING something.
If NASA cannot do the things currently on its collective plate why should anyone trust it to do things of future relevance?
You need to walk up and take something current and make it better. Only then will they trust you with the future. The fact that it is your future is irrelevant.
Keith (note spelling)
Notes:
1. When I came to my first NASA job at HQ in 1987 it was all I could do to get people to use email (NASAMail).
2. When I left my last NASA-funded job in 1996 it was all I could do to get people to use email (SSFPMail).
3. When most of you were in high school (1997) I was sitting in an auditorium at ARC at the first Astrobiology Institute planning meeting with a Mac laptop and a wireless (Richochet) Internet connection updating NASA Watch (this was before the word “blog”) live about what was happening in the meeting. I was live blogging. At one point I asked a question and held up my laptop, told them who I was and what I was doing, and all 200+ people were bewildered as to how such a thing was possible. I then coined the phrase “virtual institute” in asking how this new emerging technology was going to be used at NASA. More bewilderment.
My point: I know exactly where you folks are coming from. I have been waiting for you for more than a decade - in some cases, two.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Keith,
I’ve been reading this thread, and from your last post, I get this impression of a semi-graybeard attempting to actually accomplish something. You know me, so you know what I mean.
Something that gets ignored is the fact that the wind direction changes every four years or so, based upon who is residing in the White House at any given time.
During the 1960s, NASA had a clear direction, but that direction lost momentum thanks to Richard Nixon. The program basically languished under Ford and Carter.
Through the 80s and early 90s, the program was content to go roundy-round the Earth, until the ISS was dreamed up. Now, there was something meaningful to do: construct a real outpost on the “final frontier”.
When it was less than halfway done, short attention spans reared their heads and calls to abandon the ISS and start on the “next best thing” began to be heard. Understanding the need to finish one’s meal before asking for dessert, the current NASA administration is pressing ahead to finish what it started…a good way to show discipline and earn budgetary allocations.
We all know that the current plan is to complete the ISS and retire the STS at the end of 2010, so that resources can be applied to Moon, Mars, and beyond. But wait!
There will be a new resident in the White House, and if their belief is that MMB is a foolish waste of money, then what will become of all of the work that was begun. Shelved, sold off, history repeats itself yet again.
In a sense, Keith, working at NASA is a lot like a “Dilbert” cartoon, in fact, I’d bet that Scott Adams gets a lot of his inspiration from there.
It reminds me of the cartoon where the pointy-haired boss calls Dilbert in to tell him that he’s changed the project’s requirements, and Dilbert responds by telling him that he’s done nothing but carry empty binders around for the past three months.
These “kids” could probably accomplish a lot, unfortunately, financial realities dictate NASA’s reality, such as it is at any given time.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
This is my first time visiting this site. If y’all don’t mind a couple of thoughts:
1. “NASA has been working toward increasing public understanding of what it does and why it is relevant to the public. NASA has created a message which intends to bring this understanding home and succinctly encapsulate everything that it does.”
I notice, for example, that no one here questions whether NASA is even doing the right things right now. The discussion seems to mimic, eg., what happened in the Bush Administration when faced with a hostile Arab/muslim world. Their answer was to appoint someone to improve PR to to the muslim world - without acknowldedging that it is our policies and implementation which are the the main problem, not how the message is sold.
2. “If recent history is an indication of the future, NASA’s budget will not change drastically.”
Actually, that’s the optimistic version.
At the recent Space Access Society conference in Phoenix, Charles Miller (space entrepreneur and advisor to the Air Force Research Lab), made a pitch that included his assessment of past NASA budget trends. He showed that in periods when balancing the budget is a priority, NASA always suffers, and loses budget in real terms. And I think 2009 will be the start of several years of more serious budget balancing than the un-controlled spending of the past several years.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Dave,
Look at the budgetary numbers as listed in the following web address:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/107493main_FY_06_budget_summ.pdf
…and you’ll see that there is no “uncontrolled spending”. In fact, if you dig deeply enough, you’ll find out that not only did they not get the money promised to them by Congress, what they did get was loaded up with “earmarks” for Congress’ pet projects.
In the wake of the CAIB report, which included insufficient funding as an indirect cause of the accident, Washington made a whole host of empty promises. They did the same again after hurricanes blasted Michoud and Kennedy.
Keith has a favorite phrase that pretty much sums it all up…”no bucks, no Buck Rogers”.
Instead of keeping their promises, they put Griffin in a no-win position, having to rob Constellation to complete ISS. I have to give the man credit for having the discipline to complete ISS, because that’s what I would have done.
The next thing on my wish list would be for “stop-loss” to be applied to the workers at KSC, so that the skills are not wasted as the workers compete to be “Dopey” in Orlando.