Video: Barriers to Innovation and Inclusion
Last summer, Johnson Space Center senior management coordinated a center-wide, cross-generational effort to explore well thought out and researched recommendations on improvements that can be implemented to make the center more open minded, collaborative, inclusive and innovative. They worked with the Joint Leadership Team (JLT), Employee Leadership Team (ELT) and Next Gen Groups, and used a team of senior leaders called the “Inclusion & Innovation (I&I) Council” to pull together seven Employee Engagement teams to work on the recommendations. The seven teams were broken down into the following categories: information technology, recruiting and new employee experience, communications, mentoring, work/life fit, awards and recognition, and barrier analysis. The teams worked for months and their recommendations were presented to senior management earlier this month. We’ve been looking forward to sharing the results on openNASA as soon as they were approved by senior management. This video, which was created by the Barrier Analysis team and posted by Wayne Hale, is the first artifact to make its way into public domain. It highlights many of the barriers an employee with an idea encounters within the organization, including management styles, institutional inertia, organizational silos, and complexity of processes. The Barrier Analysis team did an excellent job identifying the barriers and developing implementable solutions to overcome those barriers (which are captured in a hopefully soon-to-be-released white paper). We look forward to posting the rest of the work by the Barrier Analysis team, as well as the other engagement teams, as soon as we can.
Update: Read / Listen to NPR’s story from the morning edition on February 9th, 2009 about the NASA JSC Barrier Analysis video: http://is.gd/iUUh
25 Responses to “Video: Barriers to Innovation and Inclusion”
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Tim Bailey on February 6th, 2009
Finally took the time to watch the whole video–awesome work by the team! It was funny to hear the scenes I’ve seen in real life played out so perfectly on camera. Thanks for the subtitles to diffuse all of the blame on one person or practice!
So what happens now? How do you prevent or remove barriers like institutional inertia or ineffective managerial styles?
Also, the comparison to Google was a great dramatic foil, but NASA doesn’t *make* money. There will never be an exceptional idea that generates income to offset other, failed ideas that are attempted. How do you balance risk and reward when the budget is always fixed?
Jessy on February 6th, 2009
hey tim! i actually think NASA *does* “make” money– just from the taypayers. it sounds cheesy, but our success can and does translate directly into more or less dollars in the budget.
i think part of the problem is job security. those who have it (civil service), have little to no incentive to say yes to risky, innovative or new ideas– because there is no cost associated with saying no, or propagating the status quo. the mission can fail, but the job will go on.
this is of course not what ALL civil servants do, but in terms of the behaviour incentivized by the organizational structure, i believe it to be very true indeed.
those who dont have guaranteed job security (contractors) are only trying to fit in with the existing culture, to satisfy “the customer”.
Peter Robinson on February 6th, 2009
I’d say that Heather dropped the ball. She did not go to management with a set of trade studies that could rebut all the unsubstantiated claims management gave about why her design was not feasible. After her very first meeting she should have listed all the roadblocks put in her way and had answers for them. She should have had concrete proposals on how the programs requirements should be changed to support her innovative design. She should have shown how her design would save $ and/or reduce risk. At some point up the management chain managers want to save $ and reduce risk.
On the Google issue: can Google at age 10 can be compared to NASA at age 50. Give Google another 40 years and it to will develop similar process oriented view. It is the nature of organizations over time.
Now that all being said, I’ve observed all of the behaviors in the video first hand myself. But giving up is not the answer and blaming contractor vs civil servant is not the answer. Knowing the spacecraft program and systems better than anyone else is the answer and of course lots of luck.
BTW – here is an article entitled “Adjusting our Thinking” Wayne Hale wrote on the one year anniversary after the Columbia accident:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11675
Carrie on February 6th, 2009
Great ! I will add this to my bookmarks. TY
Chip McCann on February 6th, 2009
Both public and private entities have to obtain resources to perform future work. However, we have to be careful when comparing NASA to private companies such as Google.
For private industry, the process for obtaining resources seems simple; sell your product for a profit. In reality, this is a very complicated task. Just look at the number of business books that are written every year and the number of companies that still don’t make it.
For government agencies, the solution also seems simple; collect money from taxpayers. In reality, this is very complicated as well. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as our success translating into more dollars. The amazing success of the Apollo program followed by reductions in NASA’s budget is one simple example. There are not as many books written about government agencies. My personal favorite is Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It by James Q. Wilson. If anyone else has a suggestion, please post them here.
The differences really show up when we start talking about value. Private companies offer direct trades with consumers where both parties value what they get higher than what they give up. A government agency is not able to do this. Therefore, our product must be offered to Congress and the President for evaluation. I don’t think Google would be the same if they obtained recourses in this way.
Good practices for private and public organizations, such as innovation, will often overlap. My point is that fundamentally different types of organizations are appropriate when the top level process for obtaining recourses is different, so we should not take the organization of a private company as our ideal.
All that being said, if we are going to compare ourselves to private industry, I wish we would at least pick an engineering company that actually builds stuff!
kwilmoth on February 6th, 2009
I found the video and discussion interesting. I kept thinking to myself, “Why doesn’t she ask outright what the person means… i.e. ‘Are you saying that only the project office can think about design?’ or ‘Are you saying innovation is not important to this project?” But of course, those things occurred to me watching the situation, not participating in it. It’s much hard to nail down the exact thing that is dampening an idea when you’re the one getting rained on.
I shared the video and Wayne’s blog about it with some of the management at Ames and one of the folks who has been working so hard on populating the management “bench” as he calls it. Sal Rositano put together Ames’ Bootcamp which has taken mid level managers from across the Center and given them some extraordinary experiences and opportunities. These groups tackle problems or projects of their choice. A couple of them have chosen cultural ones including collaboration & innovation within Ames. They identified some of these same issues, and presented their findings to senior leadership. The leadership seems receptive, but nothing tangible has come out of it. It sounds like this is the same case at JSC. I don’t know what, if anything, will come out of it, but at least communicating the problem and making people aware is a start.
rquintanilla on February 7th, 2009
Chip,
How about Procter & Gamble? How about Public Universities?
NASA being a government agency is an excuse, that we can’t afford to lean on.
For Procter and Gamble look at “The Game Changer by A.G. Lafley”.
Public Universities are known for bringing in revenue for the university through patents and consultation. NASA can use the strategy done by modern industry (i.e. Google, Procter & Gamble), linked with tactics already used by PUBLIC universities.
They can do this utilizing not only resources provided by NASA but those of contractors that work for NASA. However in order to do this we must move past our current status and actually become competitive with industry. The way I look at it, there is no reason that we should not be cutting edge in comparison to the Auto and Manufacturing industries.
Now imagine a world where NASA is so technologically advanced, that private industry wants us to consult them with their toughest problems. We don’t give this consultation for free. We set up an infrastructure that makes it feasible for NASA and NASA contractors to provide consultation to private industry, at a price. The reason for including NASA contractors in this picture is to provide a tangible benefit for innovating with NASA.
We can then do what Procter & Gamble does and share our patents with the world. Do what the Universities do, have a share program with the contractors. At a University my professor once told me that if a Patent is successful and brings capital to the University, you are entitled to 50% of the profit. NASA can do something similar, and use the methods used by Procter & Gamble to get it done.
If we get good enough at this, one day we can go to Congress and say “we want to work on project X, doing so will make technology x,y, z possible — if this is successful the economy will see substantial increase in revenue”. We can’t do that when we are still talking about the great things the Apollo program is still doing for our economy — get over it that was over 40 years ago.
In order for a strategy like this to work, NASA needs to actually be ONE. The bickering of bureaucracy must stop. NASA must set aside funds directly linked to increasing its technical capability and that of its contractors. These funds must not change year-in/year-out regardless of political movements. The funds used for the day-in/day-out projects must then be used strategically to further increase our technical capability as a whole. That means that if spending a little extra to develop project D is necessary to develop a new ability — spend the extra money. The 10 to 20 percent increase in short-term expense will more than pay for itself in the next project. This will allow more science and exploration in the long-term.
More thoughts later.
-RQ
Leigh on February 7th, 2009
I think this video is great and was very well made. However, I would suggest putting some sort of disclaimer at the beginning of the video of who made it and why it was made. I recently had a professor in my aerospace senior design class play this video, and not for the purpose it was designed for. Before he played the video, he asked our class, “how many of you want to work for NASA when you graduate?” About half of the class raised their hands. “Well, watch this video,” He said. I was horrified when I saw what he was playing and furious that some random people would make a video about NASA that doesn’t even know whats going on. It wasn’t until I recognized someone in the video that I realized NASA employees made it. A few phone calls later, I understood the real purpose of this video and it all finally began to make sense. I don’t want to see anyone else using this or any other video for a different purpose.
-Former co-op
Maj Dan Ward, USAF on February 10th, 2009
Bravo to NASA for speaking having the intestinal fortitude to look in the mirror and admit what they see… and then to speak the truth out loud for everyone to see. That’s the first step towards making things better.
The video is insightful and interesting (and a chilling reminder of some of my own experiences as a junior military guy), but I think one of the most important aspects of this whole thing is the fact that it was made and distributed via YouTube, discussed on NPR, and not hidden under a rug.
Bravo to everyone involved in producing and distributing this little film. I hope it triggers some genuine soul-searching among the various Defenders of the Status Quo, and helps nudge NASA in a new (old!) direction.
Celeste Merryman on February 12th, 2009
Ah…no never heard of this barrier as a contractor. NOT! Happens all the time
Kevin Wilson on February 12th, 2009
THE LUNACOPTER ™. In the late 1990`s working on my fledgling consultancy, Wilson Aerospace Systems, I was attending the Paris Airshow. I met NASA Astronaut Richard Truly, and he kindly agreed to accept an executive summary of the LUNACOPTER a rocket powered “Helicopter” that would fly on the Moon and on Mars, and duplicate any manoevre a helicopter can perform in a vacuum. The Lunacopter utilises a conventional swash plate control system, with gimbling hypergolic engines on each rotor. It was clear the Admiral Richard Truly placed the executive summary into the NASA sytem, as I recieved from NASA some encouraging correspondance, however the project was not pursued.
THE HUBBLE INTERFEROMETER ( a 150 foot virtual mirror in space) Capable of resolving many deep space questions. This properly formatted, submission, was submitted to NASA in 2003
The formal proposal ( months of work) was submitted to NASA (Goddard and NASA HQ DC , and later to the Comproller General etc). The proposal incorporated a Laser Control System and proposed using the existing spare Hubble mirror. Numerous efforts and communications to NASA failed to elicit a single reply, and / or any acknowledgement. Later 2007-2009 submissions sent via email, too sensitive to mention here, were also disregarded. I can appreciate NASA`s massive voume of incoming mail, but following up phone call prompts and responding, even in the negative, is simply a matter of courtesy.
NASA obviously, harbours an illusion, that their, no doubt highly (certificated) staff) and I agree, tallented staff, endow the organisation with a monopoly in intellect. They should try looking outside the ball park. Kevin Wilson
Chip McCann on February 14th, 2009
Who said anything about excuses? I think we can make NASA a excellent government agency, but the first step in that process is not denying our identity.
To use an analogy, if you’re managing a baseball team, you should not primarily read books about football strategy.
rquintanilla on February 17th, 2009
Chip — I agree that NASA can be a great agency. However we must first understand what NASA is — it is a large technological organization. Baseball and Football are both team sports.
A baseball coach CAN use principles learned while coaching baseball to coach football…the principles being team skills. Now the tactics might differ from sport to sport, but the basic principles are the same.
Again we are a large technological organization. Therefore, we can draw upon principles that have been learned from other large technological organizations.
The difference in strategy is to account the difference in success criteria between a government agency and a private entity. We must do a better job at defining success for NASA, and then do what we need to do to meet it. However, strategy used by industry is employable by NASA in a slightly altered way – to account for our identity.
Chip McCann on March 1st, 2009
I agree that a drawing on breadth of subjects is beneficial. However, if I had to put them in priority order it would go like this:
1) Research specifically about government agencies
2) Research highlighting commonalities in all large technical organizations
3) Research specifically about private industry
My concern is that this order is not only flipped in most of the discussions I hear (focus on Google, P&G, etc), but 1 and 2 are often left out completely.
rquintanilla on March 4th, 2009
P&G has over 100k employees. Google has over 15k employees. You could argue that Google is not “2″, but P&G. Not only is P&G “2″ it was founded in 1837, so it is also an crusty (old) organization.
I don’t know much about effective government. There are a lot more examples of effective “large technical organizations” than there are of effective government. I would be very interested in learning about some good examples.
Chip McCann on March 8th, 2009
rquintanilla – Let’s talk about this off-line.
Back to some more general thoughts. In case you have not been following along with Wayne Hale’s blog since he posted the Barriers video, I’d like to highlight three subsequent posts that I think are related to this topic:
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/.....77800.html
My summary: Sometimes schedule is a necessary barrier to fully exploring an idea.
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/.....08547.html
My summary: Sometimes technical merit is a necessary barrier to fully exploring an idea.
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/.....08908.html
My summary: Sometimes requirements are a necessary barrier to fully exploring an idea.
While I agree that it’s good to promote innovation, I hope this initiative does not come at the price of schedule, technical merit, or knowing when the design is good enough and it’s time to start building hardware.
maverickwoman on February 21st, 2010
Greetings in the spirit of progress and big dreams from Sydney, Australia!
I was unable to view either of the Barriers to Innovation Videos- which I was very keen to learn from and share as we in our own organisation struggle with similar challenges. I am the Director of Innovation at AMP- a 160 year old Australian Financial Services organisation. My work focuses on innovation culture but processes so often get in the way.
Would it be possible to give me access to these videos? My YouTube profile is maverickwoman2.
Skytland on February 21st, 2010
re: maverickwoman
The video has been taken out of the public domain because there was a time restriction on the music used in the Barriers to Innovation video. The produces of the video were originally only given one year to share the video publicly, and since it’s now been a year, the video is not viewable publicly anymore. I believe that the creators of the video are requesting an extension on rights to use the music in the video, and if granted, the video may be online again sometime in the near future. I wish I could be of more help!