About

Maintaining Teamwork

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:40:49 -0600

Towards the end of last week I participated in a conversation involving my old team that led me to do some reflection. The conversation involved teamwork on the team - or rather a perceived lack of it - and a need to intervene. Without the intervention, the team risked fracturing.

As I look forward to leading a different team on a new assignment, I examined the situation with the old team and identified actions I will take with the new team.

With regards to maintaining teamwork, I see the role of the leader to be threefold: 1) Leading the team to create a set of norms or rules of behavior; 2) Facilitating team conversations to achieve maximum effectiveness; and 3) Intervening when necessary to redirect undesired behaviors that risk fracturing the team.

As I wrote earlier in the year (see Groups versus Teams), a team creates a set of norms or rules of behavior that defines the agreement on how the team members will interact with each other. While a group may be run by a chairperson, a team runs itself by norms created by the members. In reflecting back on this year, we did establish team norms in one of our earlier meetings. Yet with the passage of time, familiarity, and perhaps laziness, the team and I allowed the norms to erode. I even had to hunt around to find a copy of the norms we made. Therefore, I identified the following key lesson learned: Norms out of sight are norms out of mind. What I will do differently with the next team: Post the norms where everyone can see them. Periodically revisit to reinforce and refine as part of the act of facilitation, which I cover next.

In the same earlier post, I wrote about another characteristic that distinguishes a team from a group: team members aren’t out to gain personal victory, but to arrive at the best solution for the good of the whole. When team members have differences of opinion, they tend to have a dialogue about the ideas rather than argue points of view. When conversations become unbalanced, the role of the leader is to rebalance through facilitation. Besides guiding the team to the established norms, the leader can rebalance conversations and ask questions that redirect and refocus the team. The key action for the future: Watch team interactions very carefully for signs of imbalanced conversations and facilitate immediately.

Finally, the earlier post addressed that team members cooperate to plan and coordinate roles. Their work lives are linked together, and they depend on each other. When a team member is perceived not to pull his weight or to cooperate, the role of the leader is to intervene. Intervention takes three steps: Step 1, identification: “I’ve noticed that...” and state facts. Step 2, impact: “I’m concerned that...” and state the impact. Step 3, next steps: “I expect...” or “I decided that...” and state the expectations or decision. Intervention was the action taken late last week with the team.

In looking through all of the above, I came to a realization. One is not sufficient. A leader needs all three in his/her toolkit. This is a valuable lesson learned, and relearned, for maintaining teamwork.

Change

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:36:28 -0600

Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading the final report from the Augustine Committee and reflecting on the near-term future of human spaceflight. Like many of my colleagues, I’m curious about the guidance and policy decisions forthcoming from the Obama administration. As I gaze into my crystal ball, I believe there is one thing we can count on:

Change.

With respect to change, one fundamental question comes to my mind: how does one implement effective change across a broad and diverse agency such as NASA? Over the years, I've encountered various change approaches. Part of me wonders if the various approaches I’ve learned through “book learning” can be translated into actual success when implementing change in the public sector. Here, I’m talking about approaches such as Kotter’s Eight Steps, another one that matches the change process to the change challenge, and many others.

Recently, I read about a study conducted by Booz-Allen-Hamilton on “What It Takes to Change Government,” posted on govexec.com. The report cites ten characteristics public sector leaders had in common who successfully enacted change, and furthermore offers that these characteristics are missing from other leaders who failed to enact successful change. Of the ten characteristics identified in the report, two in particular caught my eye and will be the topic of this post:

1) Fewer goals, greater success
2) Focus on customers

Let’s start with goals. What is the goal of NASA? Over the years, there have been various mission statements, goal statements, and the like. All of them strike me as having been crafted in smoky back rooms by political appointees catering to every special interest within NASA, and even outside. As a result, none have stuck with me. In fact, go to NASA’s website and see if you can find an overarching simple-to-understand goal statement. You won’t find one.

Now, do an informal poll of space enthusiasts both within and outside NASA and ask, “What should NASA’s goal be?” I bet from a majority you’ll get a simple answer: it is to establish a permanent human foothold off our planet. The even more inspirational phraseology I like is “to settle the stars.” In either case, I see it as a matter of ensuring the survival of our species. Between humankind’s mismanagement of our home planet through overpopulation, pollution and global wars, and the potential for natural disasters, there are a number of ways that the human race could end. How better to hedge our bets than by settling other places beyond Earth?

If NASA could rally around a simple goal, imagine the energy that would result from within and the support from outside NASA.

Next, let’s talk about customers. Who is NASA’s customer? I offer that in the direct sense, NASA does not have a customer; NASA does not offer a product or service that is consumed directly (ask Dennis Tito). Instead of customer, how about we consider “stakeholder”? If so, that would include the U.S. government, the American public, the scientific and education communities, the industrial base and commercial business interests, and human civilization as a whole. In addressing stakeholders, we are an arm of the President in that we enact executive policy; of Congress in that we are funded by and exist in many of the congressional districts; of the scientific and educational communities in that we expand the frontiers of knowledge and share that with future generations; and of the American public and human civilization as a whole (see my comment on goals). This is a tall order, and in my opinion makes this aspect of change management quite a challenge.

When I look ahead to the greatest challenges facing NASA to embrace the change to come, I see the ultimate success rooted in our ability to clearly articulate the goal we’re working towards, and for the work to directly benefit a clear customer or stakeholder. Failure to do so greatly increases the risk that any change will be unsuccessful, and we’ll be left where we’ve been since the end of Apollo, with no clear mandate and wondering about our future... in space, and as a civilization.

Mentoring

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:10:48 -0500

It’s been a number of weeks since I’ve updated my blog. In recent weeks I’ve been enjoying the completion of my last assignment and pitching in a bit to help the new leader with the development of the Request for Proposals while I’m waiting to start my next assignment. I’ve also taken advantage of the time to note the larger happenings in the human spaceflight arena revolving around the Augustine Committee, and have been processing and reflecting on some rather troubling observations. With all that, I’m going to shift gears and share some recent experiences in another recent area for me - mentoring.

(Yes, my protégé reads my blog. To honor confidentiality, I’ll speak today about my experiences from my perspective in broad terms without revealing any confidences.)

First of all, I’m extremely honored to have been selected as a mentor in the formal mentoring program now underway at the Johnson Space Center. Mentoring is an activity I identified for myself upon completion of NASA’s leadership development program as a way for me to give back to NASA. This is my first opportunity to honor that commitment.

At the outset, the formal program undertook a very careful screening process to match mentors with protégés. A few weeks ago, we were notified of our matches. My protégé is a young engineer in the area where I spent the bulk of my career at NASA. Upon our first meeting, it’s clear to me that the matching committee did a bang-up job of pairing us. Wrestling with key concepts and issues is very familiar, as I recall wrestling with many of the same at that stage of my career. I sense that we share many common drives - core values - although this remains to be fully explored.

Beyond the initial meeting, we’ve achieved some quick victories so far. My perspective on mentoring is to share “this is how I did it” when faced with similar situations (see “The Leadership Web”). I’ve shared a number of experiences, both positive and “if I had it to do all over again, I’d...” I can see the enthusiasm to explore and try some of my suggestions. Often, the time passes so quickly in our conversations that at one moment, we start, and before I realized it, two hours have passed!

I’m glad I volunteered to be a mentor and am excited at developing the mentoring partnership. What has been your experience with mentoring? I welcome your comments and feedback.

Closure, and What’s Next?

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:11:07 -0500

I see I left everyone hanging with my last blog entry.

The day after I posted my last entry (see Caught in the Middle), two key NASA executives negotiated an agreement that led to the approval of the team’s strategy for the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. The team and I have been working on this strategy for nine months, and it feels tremendous to get the strategy approved.

Finally.

I’ve been enjoying the time since then, handing over details to the new leader who will see to the implementation of the strategy, and helping the team on an item or two, as I await word of my next assignment.

Meanwhile, I started today in my official capacity as a mentor to a young NASA engineer. She and I had our first meeting today, and I’m looking forward to our mentoring partnership. I shared with her my paraphrase of the Richard Feynman quote, when she asked me why I had volunteered to be a mentor: the learning process is not complete for me until I share it with someone else.

It’s going to be a nice, relaxing time as I continue to reflect and review my experiences over the last nine months, and prepare for the assignment to come. Meanwhile, I’ll be shifting gears to write about different topics. I’m already working on my first one.

Until then, keep on making a difference!

Caught in the Middle

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:44:21 -0500

Did I mention that the team is still awaiting approval of our strategy?

Oh yes, I did. I’m starting to sound like a broken record.

This morning I was greeted by an email that basically said HQ did not approve our latest revised strategy. I took the first of several head-clearing walks today in beautiful weather and reflected on the message.

“Did not approve.”

As a developing leader seeking to learn from my experiences, I reflected on the outcome and asked myself the question: “What could I have done differently that would have led to approval?” It was a nice day today, and I wasn’t in a rush to head back to my training class, so I continued my walk. I ran into a colleague - not just any colleague, but the team leader on my previous assignment (I was his deputy) - and shared with him the latest news. Mainly, I was seeking his insights on what I could have done differently if he were in my shoes. The answer: nothing.

On a later head-clearing walk, I conversed with my boss to seek his insights. He shared some additional details to which he was privy (and I was not yet), and basically reaffirmed the earlier message: nothing.

So, I’m getting a consistent message that there was nothing I could have done differently that would have altered the outcome. Now for a person like me driven by a model of leadership centered around alignment, actions, and results, I’m left with a puzzling situation: what do I do next? What is my next step?

Clearly, my next step was to get more information. Actually, I didn’t have to seek far - the information came to me via trusted sources. Basically, I’m caught in the middle of what appears to be politics and conflicts between key decision makers. The details are not important for this entry. Instead, the mere fact that politics and conflicts should be a factor in decision making is the point. Something that I learned during my time in the NASA leadership development program is that politics and other soft factors become greater factors in decision-making at the higher levels of leadership. In contrast, lower levels decisions are driven by technical, schedule, and financial reasons. When I consider the work of the team, I see a very strong strategy built upon clearly rational technical, schedule, and financial bases. Yet softer considerations are either getting in the way of clear decision making, or are bringing to bear factors that we haven’t considered in our strategy. Either way, I’m in a position where I don’t know what my next step should be. That is what led to my head-clearing walks.

Then it hit me. When one doesn’t know what to do, what should one do?

Ask for help.

Understand that as a developing leader, I want to demonstrate competence and capability to lead, so that I will get future opportunities to lead and continue my growth and development. My natural inclination is to rely upon my own resources to meet the goals of the organization, galvanize the action of the team, and get the results we seek. Asking for help is tough. Yet here I am, typing this entry and watching SportsCenter on ESPN showing a segment on USC football, with the lead-in song, “Lean on Me.” It’s the universe talking to me, amplifying the message of today.

Sometimes, we have to lean on others, and when I realized that, I knew my next step was to ask for help. So I did. Turns out that my leadership had already set forth on the next step, to get the key executives together so that we can have a thorough conversation on the strategy. It could happen as soon as tomorrow. Or it might be next week.

In any case, what I learned by being caught in the middle is that there is always a next step. Sometimes it’s a simple as asking for help.