TEST PILOT AIRBUS A380, A350 ENGINEERING The hard … · dragos BraTasaNu preFace BY FraNK chapmaN TEST PILOT AIRBUS A380, A350 ”As institutions become more complex and global,

The New FroNTieroF Leadership aNdTeam perFormaNceiNspiraTioN aNd LessoNsYou doN’T waNT To LearNThe hard waY

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dragos BraTasaNu

preFace BY FraNK chapmaNTEST PILOT AIRBUS A380, A350

www.SuccessEngineer.org

”As institutions become more complex and global, there is increasing need

to understand the human dynamic of social context.

This is a timely book,an essential read.”

r. gopalakrishnanDirector, Tata Sons Limited

I dedicate this book to

dr. charles pellerinfor helping me grow

into the person I am today

www.SuccessEngineer.org4 WHAT MAKES YOU FAIL

ENGINEERING SUCCESS copyright info

Copyright © 2014 by Dragos Bratasanu. All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer – The National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA has neither endorsed, sponsored nor authorized this publication. The views expressed herein are solely those of the Author and do not necessarily represent the views of NASA.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording scanning or otherwise without prior written permission of the owner.

Requests to the owner should be addressed at [email protected]

Limit of Liability / Disclaimer of Warranty

While the author and the owner have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the owner, the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages.

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ENGINEERING SUCCESS Acknowledgment

Special gratitude goes to Dr. Charles Pellerin, President of 4-D Systems, for his continuous and invaluable support with my career in the aerospace industry and for endorsing me to deliver the 4-D System worldwide. My profound thankfulness goes to Dr. Ed Hoffman, NASA Chief Knowledge Officer, Dr. Scott Hubbard, Professor at Stanford University, Dr. Guy Andre Boy, Professor at Florida Institute of Technology, Dr. Stephen Johnson, Manager at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Chris Stott, President & CEO ManSat, and Dr. Dorin Prunariu, Cosmonaut for their contributions and for their infinite help with my projects.

Immense gratitude goes to Walter Scott, Founder and CTO of DigitalGlobe Inc. for his generosity and support for me to attend the International Space University.

I wouldn’t be where I am today without the continuous support of Dr. Marius PISO, President & CEO of the Romanian Space Agency. Thank you for believing in me.

This book would have never seen the light of day without the research work and consulting of Horatiu Bahnean, without my film crew Razvan Dimitriu and Dan Stefan and without Emanuel Dumitrescu, my brilliant graphic designer. Thank you for spending your valuable time to design this book.

Deep thankfulness to my two friends who carefully reviewed this book – Lauren Herold and Dr. Michael Johnson. Their efforts are wholeheartedly appreciated.

Last but not least, all my love to Alina for her infinite patience and love in my life.

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ENGINEERING SUCCESS

pArT 1decodiNg FaiLureaNd Your BusiNess 9THE INVISIBLE SOCIAL FIELDS 12THE HIDDEN DANGERS 13BEYOND-THE-SKY LEADERSHIP 14THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS – MISSION FAILED 15

» NASA Space Shuttle Challenger 17 » Hubble Space Telescope - A two billion dollar failure 21 » NASA Mars Program - Two failures for the price of one 23 » Social failures in aviation 24 » The failure event chain 26 » The crash of the government 27

pArT 2The power oF coNTeXT 30SOCIAL EVIDENCE - LEADERS, FRIENDS & OTHER DANGERS 33

pArT 3The Four dimeNsioNsoF success 36THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN NEEDS 38CONNECTING THE DOTS - FROM HUMAN NEEDS TO DISASTER 40THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL BEHAVIORS 40

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ENGINEERING SUCCESS tAble of contents

pArT 4The LegacY oF The BraVe 47HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE - THE REPAIR MISSION 48US AIRWAYS FLIGHT 1549 - MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON 49

Your FuTure 51

HOW TO DO A SOCIAL HEALTH CHECKOF YOUR TEAM 53

BIBLIOGRAPHY 61

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 65


ENGINEERING SUCCESS prefAce

prEf

AcE Having been involved in the aerospace industry all my adult life and in

particular being involved with a profession whereby the safety of many people, including myself, is at stake, I was very interested to read this book and learn. Many years ago a particular CEO and mentor of mine once told me that, in order to succeed in management, it was not necessarily just the business education or technical ability which were paramount but the importance of choosing your teams and nurturing relationships within them. In his words: “developing personal relationships is the key to success”.

As we encounter life’s challenges, I am sure that we can all relate to the way in which we, personally, react to those around us both positively and negatively. Dragos Bratasanu’s book, “Engineering Success”, emphasises the nature of these aspects of interrelationships and the human psyche and how they can affect the outcomes from the simplest to the most complex of projects.

Wherever one works in the hierarchical chain, this book illuminates essential elements to unlocking the maximum potential from your teams, based upon both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results achieved and feedback from some of the major players in the aerospace business confirm the added value when team building following Dragos’s guidelines. I recommend this book as one that should not just be read once and left on the library shelf. It should provide the basis for continual self-appraisal and guidance in order to maximise the benefits and successes for both to the reader and his/her colleagues.

Frank ChapmanA350XWB Project Test Pilot

Airbus SAS

1PART 1

DECODING FAILUREAND YOUR BUSINESS


decoding fAilUre And yoUr bUsiness ENGINEERING SUCCESS

You and your team members are worth a better future.

But what has the present in store for you? If you are leading a project or a company, you might be familiar with today’s global situation. Organizations around the world are facing ongoing problems that require immediate attention and action from within. The fast technological advances and paradigm shifts, expansive competition and unstable markets, combined with accelerated demographic movements and a volatile global economy have created a world that has become more competitive and stressful than ever before. And be assured, stress is taking its toll on you and everyone around.

Factors such as inefficient leadership, poor communication, multitasking, rapid changes in direction and governance and confusion between management and leadership in an unstable global economy amplify the negative effects of stress on health, performance, efficiency and overall wellbeing. Such causes ultimately poison customer relationships and can lead to severe financial and technological losses.

Predictions look quite dark for the years to come, as the pressure on the individual is only set to increase. Several key questions emerge from this dilemma. How can you deal with today’s business models in a healthy, balanced way? How can you create powerful leaders that accelerate performance of a company together with its people, not at the cost of its people? How can you reduce the effects of stress on your body, enhance your relationships, maximize your potential and your overall quality of life and wellbeing? Is it possible to enhance performance, to increase profits, minimize the risk of technical failure, while at the same time remaining in balance and keeping a positive perspective? Sadly a great number of people believe this is a myth. However, recent studies show that these two conflicting paradigms can and need to exist together within organizations.

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The reality is that you bring in good people on your team, you invest in them, you give them the resources to succeed, you reward them for their brilliance, you provide them with technical and personal development training tools and logically you expect to get the best results. But even so, failure lurks in every decision, hides in the missing pieces of information, and waits for the moment when a simple chain of normal events triggers disaster. What are you missing? Let me ask this question again.

WhAt ARe you ReALLy missing?

We rely on our education, on our judgment and our intuition to make decisions, but sometimes we find ourselves in the most dangerous scenario we can be in as individuals or as team, when we don’t know that we don’t know but we believe we do know. We go through all the steps of a chain of normal events and end up picking up the pieces of a dramatic failure. What went wrong?

You and your team deserve to know the answer.

What invisible force drives us to make all the right decisions and still fail? Nobody can escape this latent force, It constantly affects you and everyone around you, your team members and your loved ones. Very few people in the world have learned how to recognize it, how to manage it and how to turn it around to work for them, rather than against them. Once understood and properly managed, this powerful force will take you and your team to previously unattainable peaks of outstanding success. This force has been decoded and brilliantly explained by the very best minds at NASA, by leaders who have achieved out-of-this-world goals, by teams who have learned powerful lessons through expensive and tragic failures. In this book, we reveal the solution to you. Applied almost exclusively for the last 15 years at NASA, we guarantee with scientific certainty that it works. Open your mind to the possibilities disclosed in this book and your business, your professional achievements, your projects and even your personal life will benefit.

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ThE InVISIbLESocIAL fIELDS

This invisible force makes the difference between success and failure and between mediocre achievements and ground-breaking realizations. This invisible influence is called social context.

Leaders today prefer to invest more into building “hard skills”, technical knowledge and project management skills rather than in what has become known today as ”soft skills” which include leadership, proficient communication and team building. Technical people focus so intently on their tasks that they fail to notice, much less manage their team’s social context. However, the term ‘soft’ is unfair, since this expertise is so important yet so difficult to develop. Ultimately, failure to recognize the importance of team social context leads to severe problems in the organization, high financial losses and devastating effects on personal health and relationships. Unnoticed social shortfalls destroy even the best-managed programs and projects.

In this book we are offering you a new and precise method of taming this unseen and powerful force. Once understood and properly managed, the social field of your team will accelerate your journey to the achievements and financial returns you deserve.

In this age of increased complexity, advanced technology and super speeds, managing the invisible social field is not a variable that you might consider. It is a must. The benefits of implementing this new philosophy into your business far outweigh the efforts and costs of including a new parameter in your operating policy.

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In the following chapters you will understand the steps to identify, evaluate, manage, control and enhance the social context of your team. Historical evidence and investigations will reveal to you all aspects of this invisible force of influence, what these lessons mean to you and their impact on your business and your life.

ThE hIDDEnDAngErS

We must emphasize from the start the effects of applying the Social Context Management processes. By using all the instruments provided, not only will you drive up the performance of your team and reduce the risk of failure, you will also control and eliminate two dangers that constantly hover silently over your team and had no remedy until now.

The first danger is what Yale University sociologist Charles Perrow called “normal accidents.” Normal accidents are not accidents that happen frequently, but rather failures that occur in the normal functionality of a system. These types of accidents are not caused by crass negligence, incompetence, or a major system malfunction. These mishaps appear when a combination of minor errors, harmless in and by themselves, creates a chain of events with catastrophic outcomes.

The second threat that you will be able to significantly reduce or even completely eliminate is “risk homeostasis.” Gerald Wilde, in his book Target Risk explains this phenomenon by demonstrating how, as human beings we have a tendency to compensate for lower risk in one area by taking a greater risk in another. Therefore, making a system safer on one side opens the door to higher risk taking on the other side. For example, when

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taxi drivers equipped their cars with ABS (anti-lock braking system) for the purpose of making braking safer, they started driving faster and taking sharp turns more quickly, thus unconsciously “spending” the new safety margin offered by ABS.

Due to their elusive nature, these dangers are almost impossible to predict, but are manageable. How can you protect yourself and your business from something that you can’t see coming, something that until now became visible only after the damage was done? The answer comes from high above.

bEyonD-ThE-SKyLEADErShIp

Space exploration has always been the greatest vision of humanity. But beyond the dreams, beyond the technological advancements, beyond the scientific discoveries, the people working in this environment have bequeathed us something far more important than the technology they built in the process. The honored visionaries that put men on the moon, flew the Space Shuttle, built the International Space Station and sent robots to Mars have left behind clear evidence that whatever we see in our imagination and believe our hearts, we can transform into reality. They left behind a process of thinking that allowed them to bring into reality everything they imagined. As Robert Goddard, the father of the American rocketry said, “It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the work of today and the reality of tomorrow.” I think we can all agree that aerospace, aviation and space flights are probably the most inspiring ideals of humanity. But why should you and your business care?

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Aerospace projects usually are developed over many years, sometimes even decades, and they involve a very long series of details that have to perfectly fit together at the end. The smallest error in this complex series of events and milestones can create a disaster that nobody can recover from once the spacecraft has left the Earth’s atmosphere. Industries today are more complex than ever before. To take an idea from concept to the market, you must go through a whole array of scientific, engineering and commercial filters. The technical risk and the social risk are constantly increasing in our complex world. The great majority of engineers, scientists and managers successfully focus and manage the technical risk. But how do you deal with the invisible forces that drive the social risk?

What leads to success in today’s highly complex environment? Dr. Ed Hoffman, NASA Chief Knowledge Officer and Director of NASA APPEL (Academy of Program / Project & Engineering Leadership) answers this question in an interview for our company:

“In our project-based world we must work together and we must constantly learn. Professional teams must constantly learn because the problems and risks that threaten your projects are constantly changing and evolving. A project is about the technical expertise and you have to get that right. A project is about the budget you have to manage and control, and a project is about time and logistics.

But people who are truly successful go beyond that. You need to understand that any project comes down to multidisciplinary expertise. As a manager, you must welcome and accommodate people with a variety of different skills – engineers in various disciplines, scientists who have different questions and hypotheses, financial people, marketing people, and you must learn how to successfully integrate these diverse elements into a successful team.

Most of the times people are highly competent at their jobs, but if social context - the invisible social constructs created by your team members - is unmanaged, chances are you will fail. The social context is the force field that shifts the balance of information

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sharing and open communication one way or another in your team. You might find it easy to get along with people who think like you and to create a social environment of mutual respect and understanding in which everybody is giving their best. But it is not so easy to work with people who don’t think like you, who haven’t been schooled the same way, with people from different backgrounds, different values and coming from different societies, or indeed people who speak different languages. You have to create a social context that keeps these people together and you have to keep them on target. If you succeed at doing that you will be very successful”.

With the same technology and the same teams, the key discriminator between expensive and tragic failures and brilliant successes is not technical. That key is the social context and leadership. That key is you.

ThE booKof rEVELATIonS –MISSIon fAILED

“Blessed is he that read and they that hear the wordsof this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein.”

REVELATION 1:3

History has revealed time and time again that failure opens the door to the most powerful lessons and discoveries – but it does so only if you have the courage to accept reality and look failure in the eye. Aerospace leaders are forced to do exactly this. In this environment, when accidents happen, when projects fail, the ensuing investigations

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are thorough and all-consuming. Investigators do not stop at the obvious technical effects but go beyond them and discover the social shortfalls that triggered the failure. The people who conduct failure investigations are very skeptical, very questioning. They ask all the questions you don’t want them to ask. Again and again they discover that the social context, this invisible force, is the root cause of failures and disasters. The aerospace industry had to learn severe and sometimes tragic lessons that can now be applied in all industries to mitigate risk and avoid project failures. There is a common saying that smart people learn from their mistakes. But wise people learn from the mistakes of others. Let’s investigate together some of the most expensive and devastating failures in history and what lessons you can implement to avoid similar disasters in your business.

n A S A S p A c E S h U T T L E c h A L L E n g E r

In 1986, NASA Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven astronauts onboard. This was the first mission of NASA with a civilian as part of the crew, aiming to take space exploration further into the minds and hearts of the entire world. The explosion was caused by a faulty rubber sealing that allowed pressurized hot gas within the solid rocket motor to vent out. This caused a structural failure of the external tank and consequently the aerodynamic forces broke up the orbiter.

The failure review board identified the technical cause relatively easy – a technical error of not understanding the properties of rubber at low temperatures. But how could some of the best engineers in the world not understand the properties of the rubber, after so many successful flights?

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Sociologist Diane Vaughan, professor at Columbia University and member of the failure review board discovered that the engineers did actually understand the properties of the rubber very thoroughly and they even warned NASA about the danger of explosion. The real question was why did NASA launch when all the evidence suggested they should not?

At the time, the Space Shuttle was the national transportation system for all U.S. payloads. Therefore, a delay with a launch would delay all other payloads. NASA was under enormous pressure to keep all launches within schedule. This immense pressure created at NASA a social field in which managers unconsciously began requiring evermore persuasive evidence to delay a launch than allow it to continue. So as the social context changed again and again with increased political pressure, it got to the point where almost nothing would delay or stop a shuttle launch. Diane Vaughan revealed that the root cause of this tragedy was the subconscious change in perception at NASA. She continued to say that these social forces are invisible and unacknowledged, they can never be changed and you can never deal with them.

“There is only one driving reason that a potentially dangerous system would be allowed to fly” declared chief astronaut John. W. Young in the aftermath of this disaster: “launch schedule pressure”.

What happened to the very skilled NASA launch team was what is now known as “normalization of deviance”. Normalization of deviance is a social effect almost impossible to perceive if you don’t know where to look. People within a group become so accustomed to a deviant behavior that they fail to notice it as being deviant and regard it as normal. As the deviant behavior occurs more often, people adapt to it and eventually make it a habit. A deviant behavior that takes people away slowly and naturally from their standard of excellence will surely lead to failure.

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Dr. Ed Hoffman explains that people have the tendency to normalize. As individuals, as project teams, as organizations we have clear standards of excellence. We set these standards from the beginning and then expect nothing short of the very best. However, as the project advances we encounter various problems. If the solutions to these problems are not exactly what we initially wanted but the technology still works and we don’t have a failure, they tend to become the new standard. Very slowly we begin to believe that if a technology works even with a lower than expected quality, we accept it and this lower quality eventually becomes the standard. And then it starts slipping away from our standards of excellence until it crosses a threshold and turns into a failure.

The technology used on Space Shuttle Challenger had shown problems in the past. Engineers had solid evidence that technology would fail during this flight and some even tried to stop the launch the day before. But social context is more powerful than evidence and reason. NASA launch managers unconsciously signed off on something that they knew was problematic. The root cause of this tragedy was a flawed social context, the social field at NASA and the effect was technical.

Could this disaster have been prevented? Could that “invisible and unacknowledged forces” have been foreseen? At that time, no. Now, absolutely yes!

“Frequently we find that failure effects and proximate causesare technical, but the root causes are social and psychological.

My sense from experience is that 80-95% of failuresare ultimately due to human error and miscommunication.”

DR. STEPHEN JOHNSON, NASA

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Normalization of deviance is the root cause of many failures, some of them resulting in catastrophic losses. The mental process that allows this social pattern to form is incredibly simple. This is why you do not see the real danger until it is too late. Normalization of deviance is a dangerous shortcut that allows you to succeed one time, two times or three times and eventually begins to look like the normal approach for your goal. In your mind, the risk factor diminishes every time you find yourself unscathed at the end of this new path. But the danger is always there – you have simply taught yourself ways to ignore it and apparently with solid evidence. An invisible pattern like this claimed the lives of 32 passengers on board Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that crashed off the coast of Italy on January 13, 2012.

Like many others before him, Francesco Schettino - the captain of Costa Concordia - decided to deviate from the approved navigation plan and pass very closely to an island in the Mediterranean Sea. This behavior was nothing other than an unofficial near-shore salute to the local islanders and had become a tradition (i.e. habit) for cruise ships sailing in the region. Nothing had happened in the past and everybody assumed it was safe to sail there - until that fateful day when Costa Concordia hit a reef. The collision caused a temporary power blackout when water flooded the engine’s room. Even though he knew the ship was severely damaged, the captain did not call for help or order abandon ship. Instead, he tried to resume the original course and return to port. This maneuver failed, the ship partially sank and 32 people lost their lives.

Deviating from the standard route had become a normal, accepted behavior. This wasn’t a deliberate act on the part of the crew. They had slowly fallen into this invisible social pattern that put them at risk. The root cause of this tragedy was the subconscious shift in perception created by the social environment in which the captain operated. This social context regarded breaking the rules as normal and it unconsciously affected the captain’s decisions.

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Another example of normalization of deviance is the famous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft that took place in 1990. On the morning of March 18th, two robbers dressed as Boston police officers gained entrance into the museum and stole paintings valued at 500 million dollars. The security guard on duty simply let them in without asking any questions. “I felt compelled to obey a police officer’s demand,” he said. He did so even though the security manual clearly stated that absolutely nobody is allowed into the Gardner museum after hours without prior permission from the management. Violation of procedures and protocols is a classic example of normalized deviant behaviors, a minor social error that causes enormous financial losses. Combined with our subconscious and automatic response to authority – in this case the police officers – this behavior can be very dangerous in high-risk industries.

h U b b L E S p A c E T E L E S c o p E – A T W o b I L L I o n D o L L A r f A I L U r E

Hubble Space Telescope is a masterpiece of technology and innovation and was named by National Geographic the “holy grail of space exploration.” You have probably enjoyed the beautiful images of the universe taken by Hubble. But what is the real story of the Hubble Space Telescope?

The development of Hubble Space Telescope was one of the most difficult projects at NASA. The teams were faced with many technical problems, extensive delays and constant overruns. Finally, on April 24th 1990, Hubble Space Telescope was launched. The rocket took the telescope to the right orbit, Hubble deployed and… nothing. The two billion dollar, state-of-the-art telescope was faulty and completely useless.

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The failure review board spent five months investigating this disaster and discovered the primary mirror was flawed due to a technical error in the development phase. The question then asked was how the best scientists and engineers in the world could make such an amateurish error? Why did these experts rationalize away all the evidence and tests that showed them that something might be wrong with the mirror?

This story clearly reveals the contrast between the amount of effort we put into developing ourselves as individuals through courses and training versus the attention we give to the invisible social field we create and sustain in our team. The failure review board discovered that the contractor had been under enormous stress and criticism from NASA for overruns and delays. They unconsciously engaged in tactics to encourage withholding of troubling information. The contractor never mentioned to NASA the evidence and erroneous measurements that might have saved the mission. The root cause of the Hubble mirror failure was the invisible social field, the social construct that prevented important communication to NASA and important communication within the technical group. This failure could have been avoided if NASA leaders had paid more attention to what happened with Space Shuttle Challenger several years before and applied that wisdom now, but they hadn’t.

What are the lessons for you? What are the implications for your projects, what can happen if your team members subconsciously and automatically decide to hide important data from you because they feel they can’t tell the truth without reprisals? What are the implications for your projects if they withhold troublesome information from you? What if your contractors unconsciously choose to hide information from you and you discover this only when it is too late?

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n A S A M A r S p r o g r A M – T W o f A I L U r E S f o r T h E p r I c E o f o n E

A failure can make or break any team and a failure can break even you. A failure gives you the option to lie, deny or decline your responsibility, and the option to be honest and have the courage to look reality in the eye and make a real difference.

Professor Scott Hubbard from Stanford University is a brilliant leader who transformed a black list of mission failures into multiple mission successes with the NASA Mars Program. Using the same technology and almost the same people, Professor Hubbard managed to succeed where others before him have only crashed and burned. What was the key discriminator that allowed these missions to become successful and how can you integrate it in your projects?

The two Mars missions that were launched in 1998 were built by a team attempting to complete a project without the proper resources. They failed. These missions were being pressed by the NASA administrator into what he called “faster, better, cheaper.” He pressed them very hard, on a limited budget, an absolutely fixed schedule and rigid requirements. And so, when faced with the task of building two spacecraft for the price of one, the team started taking foolish risks. The difference between prudent, calculated risk and foolish risk is a key discriminator when embarking on a bold and innovative project. The team had started taking foolish risks and as a consequence both of the missions disappeared in late 1999. That was the point where I was brought in by NASA to “fix the mess” as they said.

Many of these same team members were involved in the next missions, which were successful. Under my direction, the team collectively put systems engineering back into the system. The lesson: You can squeeze one part - if you squeeze on the budget you better relax the schedule or relax the requirements. You can’t squeeze all three past a certain point and expect to be successful.

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“More than 50% of the cost of a project is socially determined”.DR. JOHN MATHER, NASA SCIENTIST AND NOBEL PRIzE WINNER

You are probably thinking right now that these failures happened in the space industry because the projects were very difficult. It is true - there is a high degree of risk involved, the technologies are new and missions are very complex. Let’s leave the space sector and go to an industry that can impact all of us – the aviation industry. What powerful lessons can we draw from the tragic failures in this field?

S o c I A L f A I L U r E S I n A V I AT I o n

“Thou Shall Not Criticize Your Superior Officer”THE GOSPEL

In the 1990s Korean Airlines had a crash rate of 17 times higher than the industry average. The situation got so bad that the president of South Korea was afraid to fly on Korean Airlines. What do you think allowed this problem to go on for 4 years?

The company had made the same erroneous assumption technical people often make - they assumed the crashes were caused by the pilots’ individual flying skills. But this assumption was disproved by science. The pilots were tested in simulators, in which they were faced with difficult conditions and complex situations, and their competence was clearly proven again and again. The Korean Air pilots were as skilled and competent as other pilots from any airline company in the world. Finally, experts from a subsidiary of Boeing discovered the root cause of these disasters.

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Investigations revealed that the root cause of the crashes was the transference of the Korean social hierarchy into the cockpit. Korean Airlines had unknowingly imported Confucianism into their flying teams. In Confucian society you can’t criticize an older person. Moreover, the pilots were trained as military pilots and there was a rank differential between them and the copilots. When the captain was flying the plane the first officer could not criticize or even inform him of any mistakes the captain had made. The captain’s social status was so high that nobody was able to directly communicate with him and he literally flew the plane all by himself. Due to the deeply entrenched social norms and to save the honor, the first officer was unable to criticize and correct errors made by a senior pilot. The root cause was again the flawed invisible social context that prevented important communication in the cockpit.

No amount of individual training in flying skills would have helped. Poor crew communication and long-standing rules of social and military hierarchy crashed these planes. The principal investigator of one of these accidents said something which can highlight the power of the social context to automatically and subconsciously drive our thinking and behaviors. He said that in all these cases of crashing, in order to save the honor, the co-pilot knew he was dying and he didn’t say a word.

Malcolm Gladwell in his famous book Outliers – The Story of Success clearly shows that the list of countries with the highest respect for authority - reaching even the point of blind obedience - and the list of countries with the highest number of plane crashes, are practically identical.

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T h E f A I L U r E E V E n T c h A I n

The first thing a leader does when he or she joins an organization is to say: “we will change the culture”. But rarely does one know how to truly evaluate the existing culture and to say “this is our culture now, this is how we want it to be and these are the steps that we need to take to change that culture”. One of the greatest challenges leaders have to face today is to understand the connection between culture and failure and to then make the necessary improvements to culture to ensure reduced risk and high performance. To make this connection you need to understand the nature of failures. Failure is generally the outcome of a chain of events that is made more likely by various contributing factors. Dr. Stephen Johnson, NASA Manager and Scientist discovered that frequently the failure effects and the proximate causes are technical, but the root causes and contributing factors are social or psychological. 80-95% of failures are ultimately caused by human errors or miscommunication. The root causes are social and psychological, the effects are technical. Contrary to the popular belief, it is the very banality of these causes that makes them so difficult to find.

FAILURE EVENT CHAIN

Credits: Dr. Stephen Johnson, NASA (used with permission)

CONTRIBUTING FACTORSSOCIAL

Overambitious schedulePower asymmetry

Weak safety organizationOverconfidence

CONTRIBUTING FACTORSSOCIAL

Overambitious schedulePower asymmetry

Weak safety organizationOverconfidence

ROOT CAUSESSOCIAL

Individual mistakesMisunderstandingsMiscommunicationFlawed leadership

FAILURE EFFECTSTECHNICAL

ExplosionCrash

Data lossCatastrophic effects

PROXIMATE CAUSESTECHNICAL

Operator Bad CommandMechanical Failure

Structure failureBroken parts

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Think deeply about how culture affects your organization, your team, your own decisions and behaviors. Grasping and understanding the enormous power of the social context over thinking and over your decisions is the first step you must undertake to increase safety, team efficiency and ultimately improve your leadership skills. What are the implications for your projects if people who hold valuable information in your team or in your company feel they cannot tell the truth without reprisals and unknowingly hide information from you? What are the financial losses that emerge from people withholding data from you? The most important question that you need to ask is: “What is the real cost of failure in your business?” In all high-risk industries, this isn’t an issue of insurance or cost reduction. This is a matter of life and death.

T h E c r A S h o f T h E g o V E r n M E n T

In 2010, in heavy fog and low visibility, the aircraft carrying the Polish president and other government officials failed to make the runway and crashed into a wooded area during the final approach to an airport in Russia. All 96 passengers and crew died.

The proximate technical cause of the accident is clear. Visibility was extremely low due to fog. The pilot tried an initial approach to determine if they could safely land before committing themselves. By using the radio altimeter, they misjudged the altitude and the terrain, the plane hit the trees and crashed in the forest. Prior to this, the ground crew had warned them that they did not have the conditions to land, but the controller did not have the authority to turn the plane around. The question was - why did the best military pilots of Poland attempt to land the plane, ignoring warnings about the weather and disregarding the warnings of the flight controller?

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The root cause of this accident was social - the pressure put by the government officials on the pilots to land the plane as soon as possible at that specific airport. According to aviation laws, nobody is allowed into the cockpit during critical moments such as takeoff and landing. Below a certain altitude, pilots should be isolated so they can focus on their tasks. One of the government officials broke this law and went into the cockpit to check if they would be landing on time. His presence there changed the social context - this automatically and unconsciously affected the crew’s critical thinking and decisions to land the plane. Why did the captain try to land the plane under these conditions?

“He probably didn’t want to lose his job,” said one of the members of the investigation committee. Nobody wants to disappoint a president and the presence of one of the officials in the cockpit unconsciously influenced the decision and the communication of the crew. The root cause of this tragedy was the flawed social context created in the cockpit that led to poor decision-making and in the end, lead to the death of 96 people. The vast majority of root causes, if pursued far enough, are individual and group mistakes. This is the most important discovery and lesson of this book.

Social contexts and not individual abilities drive performance and risk.DR. CHARLES PELLERIN, NASA DIRECTOR

The explosion of the nuclear reactor at Fukushima in Japan, the tragic gas explosions in Guadalajara Mexico, the chemical disaster at Bhopal in India, the Amagasaki train crash in Japan, the plane crash that lead to the death of the entire Yaroslavl hockey team in Russia, the crash of the Asiana flight in San Francisco and even the sinking of the Titanic are just a few examples in which the social context made the difference between life and death. All these people found themselves in the worst possible scenario: what they thought they knew wasn’t actually what they needed to know. These failures have several things in common: initially they appeared to have a technical failure as the root cause. However, the individuals working on these projects were technically competent, in many cases they were the most technically qualified engineers, pilots

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and managers in the world. Thus, individuals’ technical abilities were not the root cause of the failures. Second, these mishaps were all avoidable. The real root cause of these failures was team-level social context. These causes can be avoided at minimal cost using our management instruments, as explained in the last section of this book.

The Library of Babel is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges that entertains the idea that all human knowledge is captured in a strange library. The only problem is that the library is so full of junk that nobody can find anything. This is a useful metaphor for the world and the times we are living in – there is so much information, so much knowledge, so many techniques and so many tools, that it can be overwhelming. One of the key issues for us is to be able to identify the right lessons, the right knowledge. What is it that you really need in order to succeed?

One of the biggest challenges is to discover the latent social structures of your team, to decode and manage the invisible social field that drives performance and risk, to understand the profound implications of failing to manage the social context and to immediately use the software and methodology available to measure, benchmark and improve the social environment to avoid project failures, financial losses and even disaster. You will learn how to access the instruments in the last section of this book.

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2pArT 2

ThE pOwER OF CONTExT


the power of context ENGINEERING SUCCESS

The social context is the force that pushes us to new heights as individuals and as teams but is also the force that may invisibly cause failures and financial losses, if mishandled. But what exactly is social context? The social context is the invisible, unacknowledged and immeasurable force field created by the behavior of each individual. If you regard the behavior of each individual as a force, the social context is the invisible field created by all these forces coming together.

The social context unconsciously drives your behaviors. You automatically adapt to the social environment in business and in your everyday life. It is easy to understand that

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do” and it is perfectly OK to synchronize yourself with the social field created by others around you. The real problems emerge when the social field is flawed and instead of driving performance, it drives failure. Then you simply and unknowingly become part of the problem.

Really think about this for a moment – Would you naturally and automatically have different behaviors, or instantly change your behaviors and adapt to the following contexts?

1. WHEN YOU ARE GIVING OR RECEIVING A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL? 2. WHEN YOU ARE HAVING DINNER WITH YOUR PARENTS-IN-LAW? 3. WHEN YOU ARE GOING OUT TO THE BAR TO WATCH THE GAME WITH THE GUYS? 4. WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOU ARE HAVING YOUR ANNUAL REVIEW WITH YOUR BOSSES? 5. WHAT IF YOU ARE ON A PLANE THAT IS BEING HIJACKED?

In all these cases, do you adapt your behaviors to the context? If you don’t adapt to the context, do you get punished? The answer is yes. Adapting to the social context is an subconscious and natural decision we all make.

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Do you think that a team member who is constantly beat down for bringing in bad news to his leader will unconsciously adapt and withhold subsequent important information in order to avoid criticism and reprisals? Do you think team members who are under constant pressure will unconsciously hide information to avoid even more stressful situations?

The copilots flying with Korean Airlines subconsciously adapted to the context and withheld valuable information in order to save the honor of their captain. The engineers working on Hubble Space Telescope rationalized problems away and never informed NASA in order to avoid more recriminations and frustrations.

The Hubble Investigation Board reported to the Congress that a leadership failure caused the flawed mirror of the $2B telescope. NASA’s management of its contractors had been so hostile that they would not report technical problems if they could rationalize them away. They were simply tired of accusations. Dr. Charles Pellerin, NASA’s Director of Astrophysics and the leader of the Hubble development team writes in his book How NASA Builds Teams, “The management created a social context that put these good people in bad places. NASA managers […] relentlessly criticized and pressured the contractors. The contractors, operating from a place of relative powerlessness engaged in guerilla tactics by withholding troubling information”. Adapting to the social context is an subconscious and natural decision we all make. What is the social context in your team? As leaders, we have to know exactly what our team members are adapting to and if necessary, make the proper adjustments. You will now discover the leadership and social context management secrets of some of the leading organizations in the world, how they successfully manage their highly complex project teams and how you can use these techniques to engineer your own personal and professional success.

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SocIAL EVIDEncE – frIEnDS, rELATIVES,

coLLEAgUES &oThEr DAngErS

Scientific studies demonstrate that our decisions are more the result of the social context in which we find ourselves, rather than the result of our own independent thinking or values. I know, we want to be independent, but it’s not how nature works. Many times we take our cue from the people around us. We determine the right actions based on what the others are doing, we look for answers outside ourselves. Social evidence is critical in moments of uncertainty - when we are not sure what we have to do - we automatically and unconsciously look for evidence around us – how are the people around us behaving? We automatically assume that they must know something we don’t and follow them. Unfortunately, most of the times they don’t know any better and they do the same, they look around for social evidence in us.

We see an action as appropriate when others are doing it and usually this method works and keeps us socially acceptable. This is both the good news and the bad news. If you are looking for evidence in people who empower you, who support you and who push you to take you goals further - this is perfectly fine. In times of doubt, a group who believes in you when you don’t believe in yourself is a brilliant choice and these people are a real blessing. Unfortunately, there are cases when you surrender your thinking and adapt to the social proof, to the social evidence of what others are doing or saying. As humans, we unconsciously embrace the group’s beliefs and behaviors without questioning them or surrender to their opinions. Researchers reported that in

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the face of leadership and authority, most of us bypass our thinking and simply obey the requests. When this happens, danger is not far behind.

Consider for example the case of the “rectal ear ache” reported by Cohen and Davis. A nurse put eardrops into a patient’s rectum as treatment for an ear infection, simply because she read on the prescription “place in R ear”. Both the nurse and the patient did not question at all this course of treatment and never even suspected that ”R ear” was the abbreviation for ”Right Ear”. This was a minor mishap and a story most of us find hilarious. However, we must remember that in many situations when a legitimate authority had spoken, even common sense thinking can become irrelevant. The next story is another clear example of how we unconsciously adapt our behaviors to the context, only this time the outcome revealed one of the worst tragedies in history.

November 18th, 1978. Jonestown, Guyana. On this fateful day, 909 people committed suicide in the jungle of South America simply because their spiritual leader told them to do so. Jim Jones was the leader of the Peoples’ Temple, a cult-like organization founded on a social doctrine. He led over 1000 Americans away from their families and friends into the forests of Guyana where he established a self-sustaining community. Jones grew to believe that the US Government was “out to get him” and he was convinced that people living in his small community wanted to destroy him with the support of the international media. Without external monitoring, Jim Jones’s obsessions and paranoia flourished. Because we all adapt to the social context and we look up to our leaders for solutions, he managed to transfer his mental state of fear and persecution to all his followers. So on November 18th 1978 when Jones gathered his people and told them to commit revolutionary suicide, only very few listened to the voice of reason and ran away. But 909 people did not – they followed the social evidence, accepted the delusion as reality, drank the poison and died. Even when over 250 children were poisoned, nobody objected. The leading investigator of this case declared that if they

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haven’t been removed from the social context in the United States and moved to the jungle in South America, this tragedy would have never happened.

You can’t fight the social context - you can become aware of the influence the social context has on you and make a conscious choice to follow your own thinking, your own reason and your own heart. Social context trumps reason and social context drives your behaviors with an influence akin to an invisible force. We naturally adapt our behaviors to the context. And as all these painful lessons show, the social context can make the difference between life and death.

If the social context is powerful enough to drive performance and risk but it is immeasurable and invisible, how can you discover it and manage it? How can we reduce the risk of failure in technical teams? Finally, the solution to decode this mysterious field called social context came from the very best minds at NASA and is now available to industries worldwide through our company at www.SuccessEngineer.org

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http://www.SuccessEngineer.org

3PART 3

ThE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF SUCCESS


the foUr dimensions of sUccess ENGINEERING SUCCESS

Every year there are thousands of articles, books and programs about leadership. Many of these books have, justifiably, become bestsellers and reading them is a pleasant and educative experience. They share stories and they present the 4 things leaders do, the 5 things teams do, the 10 things successful organizations do, etc. But business books cannot trigger behavioral change which is the only thing that matters. In times of stress you can never remember the 3 things, 4 things or 5 things leaders are supposed to do and actually do them. Dr. Charles Pellerin, top NASA executive, renowned leadership professor and award winning consultant actually observed that these kind of books are in fact worse than useless and do more harm because they leave you with the impression that you are doing something, when in fact you are not.

Reality is much more simple than we believe. Managing the social context – the primary force driving success and failure in a team, and triggering sustainable behavioral change – the primary challenge leaders face when managing people, comes down to four fundamental needs we all have as humans. Meeting these four fundamental human needs is necessary and sufficient to create highly performing, low-risk social contexts. What are the four fundamental human needs and how can you address them?

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ThE foUr fUnDAMEnTAL hUMAn nEEDST h E n E E D T o f E E L V A L U E D

We all need to feel valued and inherently appreciated. Please note the word need. If you have ever been in a relationship in which you didn’t feel appreciated or valued, one way or another you left that relationship. Making a person feel valued is the best way you can reward them for the work they’ve done. When employees know that their contribution is appreciated, when they know that their efforts make a difference they will find personal gratification in the success of the group. This in turn will stimulate them to give their best in the future and constantly improve their performance in the team.

T h E n E E D T o b E L o n g

We all need to feel that we belong to a team, to a family, to a group, to a dream, to a vision bigger than us. Having a sense of belonging is our second fundamental human need and gives us a sense of purpose, a sense of contributing to the world. Have you ever felt excluded? If so, you then know how painful exclusion is. People who feel excluded get angry and act out their anger in the team. No man is an island, no person can function isolated from the group. We are all connected and exclusion is therefore an unnatural behavior that goes against our innate fundamental needs. When you create a team, any kind of team, inclusion is fundamental. Without every member feeling deeply that he or she belongs to that group there is no team.

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T h E n E E D f o r h o p E

We all need to have hope. We need to wake up in the morning, expect a positive future and have something meaningful to live for. Medical doctors revealed that the single most important parameter, the key discriminator between people who die and people who recover after having their first heart attack is hope, having a sense of purpose, a sense of fulfillment. We all need to see in our minds and believe in our hearts in the image of a better tomorrow. Isn’t this what we all want? As a team leader, you must carefully tend to this aspect because failing to do so will generate an extremely low commitment on the part of your team members.

T h E n E E D f o r c E r TA I n T y

We all need to have a sense of certainty, to know that we have something certain in life, to know that we have the ability to succeed. Hope can only get you so far and it has to be sustained by predictable, positive outcomes.

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connEcTIng ThE DoTS - froM hUMAn nEEDS

To DISASTEr These four fundamental human needs are universal, they transcend all cultures. what is the connection between human needs and business failures, air disasters, gas explosions, train crashes and financial losses? The connection between the human needs and risk of failure is the following. Human needs, whether they are met or not, trigger different behaviors. You behave differently in an environment where your fundamental human needs are met than in an environment where they are not. Your human needs automatically trigger your behaviors. Behaviors come together like forces and create the social context of your team. And the social context drives the risk of failure. To reduce risk and increase performance all these four human needs must be addressed.

ThE foUr fUnDAMEnTAL bEhAVIorS

How do you meet the fundamental human needs and create an optimum social context? There are four key behaviors addressing the four human needs that you need to master in your team and in your life.

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h A b I T U A L Ly E x p r E S S A U T h E n T I c A p p r E c I AT I o n

Habitually expressing authentic appreciation addresses the fundamental need of people to feel valued. This is the most important behavior of all because it creates a social context in which people feel valued, and if they feel valued they give their best. More importantly, in this context they will feel they can tell you the truth.

Appreciation is the basic and most important tool managers have available to motivate people to perform better. Researchers analyzed 1 million employees, from 450 companies and studied the direct correlation of appreciation with productivity, profitability, employee retention and customer loyalty. The results? Every single individual wants honesty, appreciation and to be included in the team. After investigating over 2000 highly technical teams, Dr. Charles Pellerin revealed that appreciation is the most important behavior teams need to master to guarantee project success.

During the summer of 2000, the pilots of United Airlines’ went on a strike that caused terrible delays. In an unofficial discussion about the cause of the strike, pilots declared that the strike wasn’t really about the money. It was about the lack of trust in the management and feeling unappreciated.

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

- PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

Some leaders have the false impression that expressing authentic appreciation may be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Indeed, the exact opposite is true. Showing your colleagues that their work means something to you, that their efforts are valued demonstrates high character. Expressing authentic

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appreciation doesn’t cost you anything and the outcomes are simply wonderful. Habitually expressing authentic appreciation creates a social context in which people feel their intelligence is respected, they feel they are making a contribution. They will not have to adapt to a social field that automatically punishes them for bringing forth any problems they discover and reveal. Some team leaders still believe that you have to rule with an iron fist and nothing emotional like “You’ve done great work at this meeting” or “Thank you for staying after hours to finish this project” should transpire. If you are such leader, the time has come for you to rethink your strategy, simply because you are losing ground, you are driving the risk of failure higher and you are also damaging your health in the process.

Appreciation is a combination of thankfulness, admiration and approval. Appreciation has incredible effects on your personal health. When you are thankful, the body’s systems become coherent, the heart and the brain synchronize and you maximize the energy levels available. You begin to see and acknowledge the positive things you have in your life and it is easier for you to get through more challenging times. Dr. Dean Ornish from the University of California Medical School said that appreciation is the only known factor in medicine with a great positive impact on the quality of life, drastically reducing the incidence of disease and the probability of premature death.

A p p r o p r I AT E Ly I n c L U D E o T h E r S

Only an inclusive social environment can trigger high performance. People are social beings and naturally have the need to be part of a group. Intentional or unintentional exclusion - being left out - simply hurts. Leaders must promote and sustain the behavior of inclusion because it addresses our second most important fundamental human need.

Make sure that nobody is ever left out - left out of meetings, important discussions, rewards or even office events. The key to this behavior is personal attention. When

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you talk to somebody, talk to the person, pay attention to what he or she is saying and make eye contact. Do not read or write emails or do something else. And the most important thing – Listen. Listen to your colleagues because most of the time they just want to share their point of view, they want to feel heard and they don’t necessarily want to win the argument with you.

Another way to include people and build a social context of trust is by sharing something personal. This demonstrates a willingness to be open and vulnerable, you can be friendly and professional in the same time. Do you think that people who feel valued and included perform much better, especially in high-level tasks like problem solving and creativity?

A D D r E S S U n p L E A S A n T r E A L I T y

The only way you will solve the problems you face in your team, in your family and in your life is to do something that is very unnatural for people to do. You have to accept and face reality as it is. Accept the problems and deal with them head on. Most people either lie to themselves about the problems they have, or make them much worse than they are and lose the power to make a change. Addressing uncomfortable reality is hard because fear creeps in. But remember, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek, as Joseph Campbell once said.. Until we accept our fears we cannot overcome them and until we embrace our demons we cannot heal them. We don’t run from fear, we go through fear. As we embrace our problems, as we embrace our darkest fears, as we accept that we are vulnerable we create resilience within ourselves. When you address and acknowledge unpleasant realities, your creativity begins to soar and you come up with apparently magical solutions to problems.

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Most people accept living unhappy lives because it is the only way they know, they refuse to be open to the new emerging possibilities and refuse to make positive changes. Because they are afraid of being outside their own comfort zone and don’t risk anything, they live lives that are far less fulfilling than they could actually have. Optimistic, reality-grounded visions can create the impossible.

The first step in creating a life filled with passion, excitement and purpose, the first step in solving any problem is: Define and accept reality! Don’t make it worse because you then loose your power to take action, don’t ignore it and don’t lie about it. If you pretend it doesn’t exist, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Decide what you want to do, accept the boundaries, the limits and the box you find yourself inside and start building with the limited resources you have available. And if you have nothing, start building with your bare hands because others will join you and support you once you start. When you face a difficult moment with your team, or even with your family, answer together the following questions:

1. WHERE ARE WE?2. HOW DID WE GET IN THIS SITUATION?3. WHAT DO WE WANT TO CREATE FROM THIS POINT ONWARDS?4. WHAT IS THE PLAN TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN?

Take action immediately. As Richard Feynman – Nobel Prize Winner and internationally acclaimed physicists said following the NASA Challenger explosion – “For a successful technology to work, reality must take precedence over public relations because nature cannot be fooled.”

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c L A r I f y r o L E S , A c c o U n TA b I L I T y A n D A U T h o r I T y

Team members need to clarify and communicate what others can expect of them. It is mandatory for you and your team to clarify roles, accountability and authority. People need to know what they have to do, what is their responsibility, what results they need to deliver and what authority they have over the project.

1. ROLES: the functions of a person in their context2. ACCOUNTABILITY: the results individuals must deliver3. AUTHORITY: the power granted to individuals, generally through delegation

Roles, accountability and authority powerfully influence the context of the team. Of the three, accountability - the results one must deliver - is the most important of all. Most people need to change their focus from tasks to results. Let’s say for example you ask an employee to bring you a piece of information from somebody working in another organization. He comes back and says, “I called - there’s no reply, I sent an email and left a message” - did he deliver the result? No! He focused on the task but failed to provide the result. Once you shift your focus from tasks to results, you stop only when you achieve what you have in mind. Tasks mean nothing, results are everything.

Ineffective clarification of roles, accountability and authority affects industries at all levels. One of the main causes of the global financial crisis in 2009 was a lack of accountability and authority.

Dr. Werner von Braun was the key mind behind the success of the NASA Apollo program. Von Braun was a charismatic visionary, an extraordinary manager, a technical leader and a cultured, charming man. How did he successfully build the rocket that put men on the moon in 1969?

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Von Braun used a policy of “automatic responsibility” – any team member that identified a problem was required to take the responsibility for solving that problem. If the person didn’t have the necessary skills or authority to solve the problem, he was responsible and accountable to put the situation in the hands of people who could find the optimum solution.

To summarize, then, habitually express authentic appreciation, show an inclusive attitude towards people, address the unpleasant reality and clarify roles, accountability and authority. Remember – when one of these four behaviors is omitted, people fill it with their most toxic and poisonous thoughts and emotions. Take action immediately and you will see a major shift in your team’s social environment, the risk of failure will dramatically drop and your performance and success will skyrocket. This is how NASA builds their highly-technical teams, this is how aerospace companies guarantee their state-of-the-art technologies to work and this is how Fortune 500 companies lead the market in their field. The next chapter will give you the necessary evidence to understand how a powerful social context drives out-of-this-world success.

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4pArT 4

LEGACYOF ThE BRAVE


legAcy of the brAve ENGINEERING SUCCESS

hUbbLE SpAcE TELEScopE –

ThE rEpAIr MISSIonAt the time of the Hubble mirror failure nobody wanted to be associated with the project. How did Dr. Charles Pellerin, NASA’s Director of Astrophysics at the time get the best people in the world to work on the servicing mission and fix the telescope?

First of all, I started with authentic appreciation. I called everybody by saying “You know, you are the absolute best person in the world to do this work for the Hubble servicing mission”. After that I included the person I was talking to: “I would really like to have you as a member of this really important team”. Then, I expressed my commitment to the mission: “You need to understand that I am 100% committed to fix this telescope and I am not going to let anything stand in the way of our success”. And then I made my request: “Would you join my team?” Every person I called came to work and repair the best space telescope in history. Today, Hubble science operations are in the 20th year. Nobody could have imagined this after all we’ve been through but this is the social context of success. (Dr. Charles Pellerin, 2013)

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US AIrWAyS fLIghT 1549 – MIrAcLE on ThE hUDSon

At the beginning of this book you’ve seen how a flawed social context led to the crash of the airplane and to the death of the Polish president and many government officials. In that case, the social context in the cockpit drove the pilots to make the wrong decisions and the mission had a tragic outcome. But is it possible for a perfect social context to save the lives of hundreds of people even when technology fails?

On January 15th 2009, domestic flight 1549 took off from La Guardia Airport in New York City with 155 passengers and crew on board. One minute and 30 seconds into the flight the airplane hit a flock of birds. Both engines of the Airbus A320 were damaged and all attempts to restart the engines failed. The airplane was crashing.

The control tower at La Guardia Airport received the message - “Mayday, Mayday. This is Cactus 1549. We’ve hit birds, we have lost thrust in both engines”. Everybody was on high alert looking for solutions. Returning to La Guardia was the first option taken into consideration, impossible for an airplane with no working engines. Diverting to another nearby airport was also impossible. Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger had to make the hardest decision of his life. His words hit the ears of his copilot and the flight controller: “We’re going to be in the Hudson”. The 150 scared passengers received an even shorter message, but equally shocking: “Brace for impact!” 30 seconds later the airplane crash-landed into the freezing waters of the river Hudson.

After such an event you can only imagine the headlines in the next day’s newspapers. But something here was different, something changed the next day’s headlines from “Air

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disaster claims 155 lives” to an unbelievable “Miracle on the Hudson”. Every passenger on that plane walked out alive - only a few minor injuries to report.

Investigations later revealed that the captain and the copilot made all the right decisions and communicated perfectly with each other. Had they tried to return to La Guardia the plane would have crashed before reaching the airport in a highly populated area. Even the most extensive training does not prepare pilots for water landings due to the limitations of the simulators. However, the pilots in charge of Flight 1549 made the only decision that saved the lives of everyone on board.

Even the most reliable technologies can sometimes fail. The social context inside the cockpit allowed these brave pilots to assess correctly the situation, find the appropriate measures and execute them flawlessly, all in a matter of seconds.

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FfInAL

YOUR FUTURE


yoUr fUtUre ENGINEERING SUCCESS

If you came so far with the reading, we want to congratulate you for being a great leader and it is an honor for us to serve you. Over 15 years of leadership excellence in some of the most complex projects in the world - and beyond our world - combined with hard, expensive and tragic lessons have yielded up the following conclusions for your consideration:

» Social context and noT individual abilities drives performance, success or failure of a team or a project.

» The rooT causes of project failures are social – management mistakes, miscommunication, flawed organizational culture.

» Social context is created by the invisible, unacknowledged and immeasurable behavioral forces that act on a team.

» To create a highly performing social context you need to habitually express authentic appreciation, appropriately include team members, define and address unpleasant reality and clarify roles, accountability and authority.

» failure is not an option but it is constantly a possibility. you manage your success by managing both the technical and the social risk.

The old ways of doing business, the classics in terms of relating to others no longer work. This book offered you a new filter to use when you look at the world. This book is a scientific paper based on research and intensive experimentation. As with all scientific achievements, this book comes as a response to an urgent need – the need to be the best at what you are doing.

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Remember that the power to change lies in your hands. You now have the knowledge and the tools you need to shape your reality, the social environment you work and live in. The old paradigms of achieving your goals have become obsolete. More and more enterprises understand the invisible force called social context and willingly choose to manage and control it. They understand how dangerous failing to manage the social context is and they enjoy the tremendous benefits it promises in their personal and professional lives. They are moving forward in the market at ever increasing speeds. Falling behind is not an option. You and your team deserve this great opportunity. Both success and failure lie in your next decision.

hoW To Do ThE SocIAL hEALTh chEcK

of yoUr TEAM?You can immediately apply the knowledge offered by this book by using our online and offline toolset. Discover more at www.successengineer.org or contact us at [email protected] to get access to the system.

The 4-D System has been developed by Dr. Charles Pellerin. Dr. Pellerin was NASA’s Director of Astrophysics for a decade, launching 12 satellites with a budget of $750 Million / year and led one of the largest scientific programs in history. He invented the Great Observatories Program that garnered over $8 Billion for space astrophysics. NASA awarded him the Outstanding Leadership Medal and the American Astronautical Society recently gave him their highest award, the Space Flight Award. Dr. Pellerin led the initial Hubble Space Telescope repair mission for which NASA awarded him

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http://www.SuccessEngineer.org

mailto:[email protected]



a second Outstanding Leadership Medal, an honor bestowed on less than 50 people including astronauts in NASA’s History. He is the author of the book “How NASA Builds Teams” (Wiley, 2009)

The 4-D system is a team behavioral assessment and development solution for project teams, leaders and managers. The 4-D model works from the perspective of peers and offers a tool to benchmark your team against the very best at NASA. It follows through with straightforward, practical actions that can then be used to develop strength in every dimension by focusing on each behavioral norm. The program is so powerful because it changes the social context in which people work. The 4-D System is specifically designed to address technical people working in complex, high-risk environments. NASA’s most complex projects and programs – the Space Shuttle, space telescopes and human space flight missions have used this system with great success to reduce the risk of failure in their teams. To meet the challenges created by applying a leadership system to technical minds, the system works in 3 clear, logical and incremental steps.

s t e P 1 – S o c I A L r I S K M A n A g E M E n T S E M I n A r / K E y n o T E

The first step in successfully managing and improving the social context and reducing the risk of failure in your organization is for the management teams to understand these critical points:

1. WHAT IS SOCIAL CONTExT AND WHAT IS SOCIAL RISK. 2. HOW SOCIAL CONTExT DRIVES PERFORMANCE AND RISK.3. HOW TO DECODE THE SOCIAL CONTExT, MEASURE AND MANAGE IT WITH THE 4-D SYSTEM.

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This is accomplished through an interactive, intensive presentation in which participants discover the power of social context using examples from aviation, aerospace, transportation, nuclear, gas and automotive industries, and engage in decoding their social context using NASA’s Failure Event Chain (NASA ASK Magazine January 26, 2012: Volume 5, Issue 1).

Critical Learning Points & outcomes for Leaders, managers & Project teams

» Discover the clear chain between human behaviors and technical disasters

» Investigate disasters using nASA’s failure Event chain

» Discover why projects get delayed and fail due to unnoticed social reasons

» Discover what four key behaviors leaders need to develop and why failure to do so will lead to project failures

» Understand how to join this elite group of no more than 30% of the competent managers in the world

» how to analyze the latent culture and mindset of a team and how to change the social constructs according to the project phases in order to complete on time and budget

» how to change a toxic relationship with a customer/sponsor in less than 60 minutes

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» how to avoid the four critical behaviors that throw teams into death spirals

» how to boost creativity, innovation and problem solving through the only parameter missed or avoided by most leaders and team members – addressing reality

“I was somewhat circumspect of how well this would work given my previous experiences with this type of thing. I have to admit that it was

time well spent and I’ve really been impressed by the process and results” RICK GRAMMIER, PROJECT MANAGER OF THE MORE THAN $1 BILLION JUNO PROJECT, NASA JPL

s t e P 2 - T E A M D E V E L o p M E n T A S S E S S M E n T - T D A

Regardless of the nature of the team, whether operational, project or functional, a team development assessment (TDA) provides powerful insights into the behavioral norms with specific actions to drive the required behavioral change. A TDA decodes the social context and the latent behaviors into four clear, easy to understand dimensions. The power of this online instrument lies in the combination of general human behaviors with culturally driven actions required for change. A TDA highlights the context in which the team is performing, and is used as the basis for team members to understand, take ownership and be responsible for improving team security and performance.

» A TDA is an online assessment instrument to evaluate the social context of a team

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» TDA assesses the performance risk of a project as part of a health check

» benchmarks your team against 300 nASA and fortune 500 aerospace teams

» Identifies key factors that limit / enhance high performance across your organization

» TDAs are mandatory bEforE the TEAM workshops.

» TDAs are noT required before presentations for general audiences

TEAM = a group of people that work together and interact long enough to develop common behavioral norms. They DO NOT have to work together on a specific project (5-25 people)

The TDA is a fundamentally important part of the process because it decodes the social context of the team into manageable parts and offers a perspective over the most dangerous issues that require immediate attention. Just as you do a health check and find out the diagnosis before prescribing the medical treatment, teams need to have this health check performed before the workshops. TDAs are required before any team workshop to avoid unpleasant scenarios.

‘As a NASA program manager, I saw our teams make quantum leapsin improvement using the 4-D system. Later, as a senior NASA leader,

I witnessed an organization-wide transformationas the 4-D team-building system took root in our culture.’

REx D. GEVEDEN, FORMER CHIEF ENGINEER, NASA

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s t e P 3 – W o r K S h o p S

After the first two steps have been successfully completed, the third step of the 4-D process is to focus and solve the critical and the most important issues discovered through the TDAs. These workshops are done exclusively with teams of people who work together because we are applying our processes to solve together with them their own problems and challenges.

Critical Learning Points & outcomes for Leaders, managers & Project teams

» Discover the clear chain between human behaviors and technical disasters

» Investigate disasters using nASA’s failure Event chain

» Discover why projects get delayed and fail due to unnoticed social reasons

» Discover what four key behaviors leaders need to develop and why failure to do so will lead to project failures or financial losses

» how to analyze the latent culture and social constructs of their team and how to change the mindsets according to the project phases in order to complete on time and budget

» Understand how to join this elite group of no more than 30% of the competent managers in the world

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» how to change toxic relationships with customers/ sponsors in less than 60 minutes

» how to avoid the four critical behaviors that throw teams into death spirals

» how to boost creativity, innovation and problem solving through the only parameter that is missed or unconsciously avoided by most people – addressing reality.

» how to match your culture with the customer’s mindset to win contracts

» how to understand and solve problems arising from mismatching mindsets between sponsors, project managers, team members, contractors and subcontractors

» how to match a proposal team’s culture to the customer’s mindset to guarantee a winning proposal

» how to discover the latent social signatures of a request for proposal and how to match the proposal to the customer’s culture

» how to recover troubled projects due to apparently irreversible social factors

» The seven deadly “sins” of leaders, project managers and organizations

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The 4-D System Has Received theinteRnAtionAL CoACh FeDeRAtion AWARD for

“enhAnCeD Business eXCeLLenCe AnD ResuLts”

WITh DocUMEnTED

5000%reTurN-oN-iNVesTmeNT

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bibliogrAphy ENGINEERING SUCCESS

bIbL

Iogr

Aph

y 1. how nAsA Builds teams, Charles Pellerin, Ph.D., Wiley 2009

2. influence: the Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini, PhD, Collins Business Essentials 1993

3. the Challenger Launch Decision: Risky technology, Culture, and Deviance at nAsA,

Diane Vaughan, University of Chicago Press, 1996

4. exploring mars: Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery, Scott Hubbard, The University of Arizona Press, 2011

5. inviting disaster: Lessons from the edge of technology, James R. Chiles, Harper Collins, 2012

6. nAsA’s First 50 years: historical Perspectives, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2011

7. outliers – the story of success, Malcolm Gladwell, NY: Hachette, 2008

8. normal Accidents – Living with high-Risk technologies, Charles Perrow, Princeton University Press, 1999

9. target Risk 2 - A new Psychology of safety and health, Gerald Wilde, PDE Publications, 1994

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10. success, Failure and nAsA Culture, Dr. Stephen Johnson, NASA ASK Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 1, January

26, 2012

11. Report of the PResiDentiAL Commission on the space shuttle Challenger Accident,

Rogers Commission, 1986

12. the hubble space telescope optical systems Failure Report, Lew Allen, NASA Technical Report NASA-TM-103443, 1990

13. mars Climate orbiter mishap investigation Board Phase 1 Report, NASA, 1999

14. Report on the Loss of the mars Polar Lander and Deep space 2 missions,

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2000

15. sinking the unsinkable: Lessons for Leadership, Pedro Ribeiro, NASA ASK Magazine, 2013

16. managing Projects Large and small – the Fundamental skills for Delivering on Budget and on time,

Harvard Business Essentials, Harvard Business Review Press, 2004

17. What the Dog saw and other Adventures, Who Can Be Blamed For a Disaster Like Challenger explosion? no one and We’d Better get used to it,

Malcolm Gladwell, Penguin Books, 2013

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18. What other People say may Change What you see, Sandssra Blakeslee, New York Times, June 28, 2005

19. Broken Windows, George Kelling and James Wilson, The Atlanic, 2008

20. An exploration of Flawed First-line supervision, Mary Milliken-Davies, PhD dissertation, University of Tulsa, 1992

21. measures of Leadership, Mary Milliken-Davies, West Orange NJ Leadership Library of America

Inc, 1990

22. noAA n-PRime mishap investigation Final Report, 2004

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contAct ENGINEERING SUCCESS

schedule your team development assessment:[email protected]

speaking engagements, keynotes and workshops:[email protected]

Questions, ideas and suggestions:[email protected]

Directly contact the author:[email protected]

con

TAcT

Info





ABOUTThEAUThOR

Dragos Bratasanu is an internationally renowned award winning space scientist and consultant. He is the Founder & President of Success Engineering, company focused on providing cutting-edge sustainable solutions for enhancing personal and organizational success. Dragos is a worldwide official provider of NASA’s Social Risk Management & Leadership Program, offering international clients access to the same tools and techniques used by NASA in their highly complex projects.

Dragos is a PhD candidate in space sciences at the University of Siegen in Germany and a graduate of the Business & Management Department at the International Space University Space Studies Program 2012 hosted by Florida Institute of Technology and NASA Kennedy Space Center. For his research and scientific achievements Dragos received several international awards from entities like the European Space Agency ESA, European Union Satellite Center EUSC, DigitalGlobe Inc. USA, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society in Canada, International Society of Remote Sensing in Australia. He is member of several international research committees and invited peer reviewer for leading scientific journals and publications.

Dragos is presently a National Geographic collaborator and the producer of The Amazing Future & You movie. As a speaker, he has been on stage on five continents - Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and Antarctica. Drawing from his experience as a space scientist, combined with state-of-the-art discoveries in leadership intelligence, Dragos bridges the languages of science and spirituality to support people reveal their wonderful potential locked within their minds and hearts.

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TEST PILOT AIRBUS A380, A350 ENGINEERING The hard … · dragos BraTasaNu preFace BY FraNK chapmaN TEST PILOT AIRBUS A380, A350 ”As institutions become more complex and global,