When part of your mission is sending people into space, you’d better have the best people working on the job. Since its creation in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has had a reputation for attracting exceptional talent and leadership to work on some of the most complicated challenges and tasks humans have ever addressed.
But whether engineering the next spacecraft, addressing climate change, or finding solutions to ventilator shortages in the early days of the pandemic, NASA leadership knows some essential truths about helping the best talent unleash innovation, find solutions, and complete successful missions: It’s about the people. Even with the best technology and processes, human skills are necessary to get things done. Creating an environment where people thrive is the key to successful projects, says Ed Hoffman, coauthor of The Smart Mission: NASA’s Lessons for Managing Knowledge, People, and Projects.
Hoffman ought to know. He spent more than three decades with NASA, becoming the agency’s first chief knowledge officer, as well as the founder of the NASA Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership, or APPEL. Today, he is CEO of consulting firm Knowledge Strategies, LLC and a senior lecturer at Columbia University. Here, he shares four aspects of NASA’s culture that help people—and innovation—flourish:
MAKE PEOPLE THE PRIORITY
Hoffman recounts a quote he says is often repeated at NASA: “You come to NASA for the mission, but you stay for the people.” It’s a place where employees can “grow, learn, and feel appreciated,” he says. “That may sound ‘normal,’ but in so many places, you don’t get that.” The agency invests in developing team members and, in his experience, it’s not unusual for very senior staffers to interact with junior-level team members both formally and informally, to help encourage interaction to break down silos.
ADOPT ‘RADICAL TRANSPARENCY’
Harvard University professor Amy Edmondson’s research regarding “psychological safety” was “profound” for NASA, Hoffman says. “If you’re fearful, you’re not going to learn,” he says. In addition, if people are afraid to share their mistakes or concerns, the consequences could be devastating.
Much of NASA’s work is done through international collaborations or work industry supply chains. Sharing information could benefit the other party beyond the immediate mission or could raise concerns about sharing sensitive information. As a result, “you always have a reason not to tell somebody something,” he says.
NASA bucks traditional project management trends and workplace practices by adhering to “radical transparency,” he says. “[It’s the] notion that, if we’re working on the same team together, we’re going to share everything unless there’s a legal requirement not to.” This is where the book can be somewhat controversial, he says. “But the notion that you have the one group that sets the requirements, and then they give them to the designer, the designer meets that—that’s old-school,” he adds. Teams work better when as much information is shared as possible, and members collaborate from there.
GET COMFORTABLE BEING IGNORANT
Another way in which NASA differs from many organizations is that team members are encouraged to identify their knowledge strengths—and seek help for other areas. NASA has a “technical fellows” program in various disciplines and subject areas. Various people who have expertise and interest in an area, such as robotics or human systems, are part of the group, but someone is determined to be the most knowledgeable and deemed the “technical fellow.” So, when team members run into an issue, they can turn to one of the technical fellows for help.
By being honest about what you don’t know—those areas of ignorance—and turning to people who have more knowledge than you in an area leads to better outcomes, Hoffman says. He says that this principle was a reason that NASA learned the importance of diversity, in his opinion. “I don’t think it was because they were necessarily in a ‘nicer’ place,” he says. “I think it was because they believe the notion that different eyes, different perspectives, gives you a way to understand and to lessen the potential dangers there.” Hoffman says NASA encourages having a strategy for getting the information you need, whether it’s looking internally or externally for experts, and ensuring that information is sought from a broad range of sources.
CHOOSE THE RIGHT LEADERS
Because so much about how teams perform comes from their leaders, avoiding “impoverished,” or toxic, leadership. When leaders don’t support the healthy cultural aspects of an organization, get complacent, or are otherwise detracting from the team, “you can lose things pretty fast,” Hoffman says.
Choosing and investing in the right leaders is essential to help innovation and people thrive, he says. “If you get a toxic leader—if you stop taking care of the people—then you go into a very, very bad place,” Hoffman says. “So, you have to keep working. But [NASA] is a vastly improved workplace than ever before.”
Prioritizing people, giving them a safe place to learn, and supporting leaders who understand the mission and culture of their organization help make NASA a place where big ideas and accomplishments happen, Hoffman says. Organizations that model these aspects in their own cultures are on their way to having the right stuff.
This article was originally published by Fast Company.
