by Paul Dye
Better Is the Enemy of Good
We always strived for perfection in anything we did, but we were always realistic about the fact that perfection really isn’t attainable. Eventually you had to figure out in Flight Operations that “good” is usually sufficient and that “good enough” was the minimum goal to shoot for. Those with the luxury of infinite time can keep working on something until it is perfect, but if you are trying to achieve a goal by a certain date, then you have to understand when you have reached the point where you can safely get there without further time and effort.
The trick to getting a job done with excellence is knowing when you have reached a level, a bar, that satisfies all the requirements that you set out to achieve. If your goal is perfection, then you are not going to get much done—you will forever be striving for your first success. If, however, you know where your bar is—and it is okay to set it high—and you reach that point, then it is time to declare success and move on to your next challenge.
We faced this fact daily in MCC. While many people—in both the operations and engineering community—were searching for perfection, those of us who were tasked with carrying out a mission had to be realistic and move on when we had reached our bar. A simple, but useful, example was when we got the Execute Package ready for the next day’s activities. It was scheduled to be uplinked just before the crew woke up. If it wasn’t ready, then either the crew would be doing work based on the previous day’s plan (which could be wrong and lead to wasted effort), or they would be stuck twiddling their thumbs until we got the plan up to them. Neither outcome was conducive to the best use of precious on-orbit time. Therefore, the goal with the Execute Package was to get the best product up to them in the time we had available, and to make sure we didn’t send the crew anything that was just plain wrong.
There were times when we simply didn’t have all the work done, or all the answers that we needed. In that case, we’d put up what we did have and a skeleton for the rest. You needed to know what the crew needed to get started and what you could keep working on. The crew needed the morning activities in detail, and they needed to know what they could expect for the afternoon. And so long as they got the details by the time they needed them, everything would work out okay.
Trying to make things better than they needed was appreciated—so long as it didn’t slow down the process to where nothing happened and the crew didn’t get what they needed before they needed it. Yes, you could always make things better, but if that happened at the expense of getting things done, then it was worse—not better.
The Trick Is to Remain Flexible Without Becoming Completely Limp
It takes a lot more than just technical ability to accomplish a difficult task (such as flying a spacecraft) in the context of a very large organization—it takes effective leaders who have experience with managing people. If all you had to do was keep the equipment working, then the work would frankly be easy. The headaches and pain come because we have to serve many different interest groups with different demands and expectations. Some of those interest groups might want to achieve the goal in a different way. The art of leadership in this environment is in keeping as many people satisfied as possible, while keeping everyone inspired to reach the stated goals of the mission. One key to doing this is to remain flexible. Becoming hard-headed on mission requirements when you don’t actually own those requirements is a sure road to unhappiness.
The design phase of any mission is where flexibility is especially important. Mission goals are often fluid, launch dates are approximate, timelines are vague, and the options for trajectory choices are many. If you set your heart on one option too early, you’ll find yourself swimming against the current when new information—oftentimes from international partners—comes to light. Yet remaining totally flexible doesn’t show a lot of leadership—you have to address changes while keeping a reign on what is reasonable to change and what is not. The trick, as some sage opined in the Flight Director Office (I have forgotten exactly who), was to “remain flexible without becoming totally limp.”
Becoming totally limp might have been the way to keep the program (Shuttle, ISS, or something in the future) happy—they owned the requirements, and therefore they were the ones who directed what needed to be done. But it was the Flight Director’s job to implement those requirements by engaging his or her entire army of operations people—designers, time-liners, trainers, and flight controllers. And there was no better way to tick off the troops than to issue marching orders for one option on one day, and then send everyone off on a different path the next—followed by pointing them in an entirely new direction the day after that.
A good example were the timeline decisions in the ISS era. Launch days were very hard to predict more than a couple months in advance. Sure, you had a planned launch date—everyone needed a target to work toward. But I had a rule of thumb that outside of three months, the launch date would slip a week for every month between “now” and launch; and inside three months, it would slip a day for every week remaining. That seemed to work out pretty well. It acknowledged that we all had to be flexible when it came to the launch date. (The only way to absolutely guarantee that the launch date wouldn’t slip was for the Lead Flight Director to plan an expensive, nonrefundable vacation for the weeks after the flight well in advance. Invariably, the flight would slip right into that time frame and never move again.)
Early on in the ISS program, we put a great deal of effort in the detailed design of the timeline for a particular launch day. Then, as we got closer to the flight, the day would slip. The FAO world would burn the midnight oil building an entirely new timeline. We’d settle on that new timeline just as the launch slipped again—but not enough to reuse the first timeline. So a third would have to be built. Then a fourth, and a fifth, all with folks working around the clock. The system was fairly rigid, and so the replanning was expensive. But we learned from this, and eventually we created a planning process that was much more flexible. We kept the hard and fast rules, of course, but the FAO planned timelines based on different trajectory events and launch dates right from the start. It was being flexible without becoming completely limp. In fact, it became so flexible that generally they didn’t even build a detailed timeline until after we launched. The FAOs by then had so many canned timelines in their computer that it was a simple matter of pulling the right template out of the bag and letting the computers fill in the details.
Flexibility in one’s thinking was also important—it was much harder to change a mind that had been set than one that was open to change. And change always came—changing requirements in flight, changing priorities, changing rules. You didn’t need to be a fan of change, but you did need to learn to accept it, and to run with it. That can be hard to do when you live in a rule-based world, but it was something you came to grips with—or you found another job. I learned this gradually, but I finally reached the point where I told my controllers to relax when it came to the requirements. We didn’t own them—we implemented them. We had flown enough missions that we had templates for just about anything that the program might ask us to do. And as I always told them, “Unless it is illegal, immoral, or fattening, we are there to serve the program—so let’s do the best we can to give them what they need!”
Chapter 12
Leadership in a High-Risk Business
It has been almost four decades since I first walked through the doors of Mission Control. Across those many years, we flew the Space Shuttle 135 times, began routine space station operations with the Russians, and constructed the International Space Station. Along the way we deployed countless major science satellites and conducted thousands of experiments on dedicated science missions. Despite the wide variety of missions flown during those years, some things remained the same—the dedication and commitment of the men and women of Mission Control. It is rare to find a group as focused on doing a job well as the people that plan, train for, and conduct human space missions. While the
ir spirit and commitment remained a constant, there can be no argument that the techniques and organization of the work done by these many thousands of professionals changed over time.
So it is useful to reflect on the nature of many of those changes, muse on their effects—both good and bad—and, hopefully, capture many of the lessons taught and learned by the multiple generations that have called Mission Control home. There are many different opinions about what constitutes “good” flight control, or even a “good” Flight Director. But most agree on a few key principles—not the least of which were the core values inherited from the early days of spaceflight. These principles were kept foremost in the minds of every generation of flight controllers as they passed through the various vehicles and programs that were supported by the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD). In the end, it made no difference what generation you were or which vehicle you flew—you held true to the core values because you were part of a unique team that did great things.
Core Values
Much has been written on the core values of Mission Control and its people over the years. But if I had to choose one essential fact that sets Flight Control Room (FCR) flight controllers apart from everyone else—no matter what the venue—it is that they were always expected to be the smartest person in the room in their area of expertise. Whether it was a systems controller discussing a failure mode or operational procedure, a time-liner building a flight plan with program and payload elements, or a Flight Dynamics Officer helping to decide on a trajectory, the Mission Operations’ traditional goal was that no one would know more than the operations team. History has shown time and time again that flight controllers have had to lead other organizational elements to an answer that MOD had already figured out. Of course, we all know that there are always people smarter than we are—which is why all the NASA organizations are involved in missions. But the goal is to drive every one of our flight controllers to a high level of excellence.
FCR flight controllers grew up as engineers who understood the systems because they were immersed in the development of those systems. In the early programs (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo), the systems were developed from scratch on a timeline that meant that everyone was part of the team, from conceptual design through the last flight of the vehicle. Flight controllers helped design the redundancy, they defined the data and command systems, they produced the procedures and flight rules—all from scratch. The very concept of the system-level drawings—produced from blank sheets of paper by the flight controllers themselves—came from the need to interpret schematics to show how a system worked, not just “how to work it.”
Flight controllers learned the details of system operations better than their engineering counterparts because they not only developed the operational documentation and followed its development and production, but also because they trained constantly on failures and failure modes. While many of the training failures produced by simulators were of dubious quality, the very fact that flight controllers had to ask themselves, “How can it be doing that?” forced them to understand the systems at the bit and bolt level. No good flight controller left a stone unturned when evaluating a failure signature. They thought outside the box before the concept was popular. More importantly, they developed the habit of picking a reasonable course of action and seeing it through, even before the detailed failure analysis had been performed. This was because they knew that they were expected to be the smartest person in the room, and they also knew that they were the last backstop against catastrophic failure when the spacecraft was hurtling around the planet.
Flight controllers were never trained to have this trait—they trained themselves because they saw the trait in their mentors and progenitors. They understood that they were expected to “know it all,” and their superiors made it clear that nothing short of a mastery of their subject was acceptable. While this worked well with short-term programs such as Apollo, it became more and more difficult with a long-duration program such as the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station. Quite frankly, the young flight controllers who came along twenty years into an established program had no way to simulate the learning that the early folks experienced—the drawings, procedures, and flight rules were already written. They were forced, instead, to learn the system from books and lessons, and none of that required them to use their creative talents to develop a deep, gut-level understanding of the material. They learned “how to work it” rather than “how it works.” Slowly, over time, the leadership and management of MOD began to accept this as “good enough” such that it became the new standard by default rather than by design.
NASA and Leadership
Leadership is vital to any large human endeavor—it is the motivating factor that brings large groups of people together to accomplish great things. Countless books have been written on the subject, but when you boil the topic down to its bare essentials, these are the common traits of successful leaders:
1. They have a vision (mission)
2. They are focused on accomplishing that vision (mission)
3. They inspire others to believe in that vision (mission)
4. They enable their followers to accomplish that vision (mission)
Without a vision, you have no leader, without followers who believe in that vision, you have no leader; therefore, the leader must be focused on serving his followers in order to enable them to get the job done. A good leader looks forward to see the vision accomplished, and he looks back to make sure his people have what they need… but he doesn’t care about looking up to see if his superiors are happy. His superiors should be happy when he accomplishes his mission—or he is working for the wrong superiors.
This will no doubt be controversial and ruffle more than a few feathers, but it is my expert and studied belief that NASA expended too much effort breeding out leadership qualities and breeding in management techniques—and this is one significant reason for the declining fortunes of the agency over the years. Leadership and management are two different things. Leadership, as stated above, is about inspiration—inspiring a vision in others. Ideally, a person in a position of leadership would also be a good manager—but truthfully, a good leader can have others manage for him if he is inspirational enough. A good manager might be able to put resources in the correct places, but unless he can inspire, all the resources in the world will be for naught.
The great leaders throughout history have always been inspiring. A good leader needs to inspire their followers to share the vision, and then get out of the way so that they can accomplish it. You can’t do great things without a vision! Good managers need to either partner with good leaders or be visionary and inspirational themselves or nothing bold can happen. People know a good vision when they see one, and they know when they are not being inspired as well.
In the “old days” of NASA, the agency was filled with leaders who were able to inspire the workers to do great things. They were willing to take responsibility for decisions, large and small, to keep the ball rolling and momentum high. In the later years of the Shuttle program, NASA’s management techniques tended more toward deferment of important decisions, and the workers sensed the fear of taking the bold steps that are inherent in the process of spaceflight. Good leaders of the past took the attitude that they might be fired later, but they knew the right course that needed to be followed to achieve their vision and they were willing to take personal risks to achieve them.
Good leaders know that they are nothing without their team, and so they spend most of their time looking at the team members to see what they need. They are constantly engaged with serving their team so that the vision can be fulfilled. They are aware that their team members need their support, and these leaders are able to see that this is the way to accomplish their goals. Managers, on the other hand, tend to be oriented to pleasing their superiors—they are constantly looking at ways to make their boss happy, and this frequently happens at the expense of the workers. Managers are oftent
imes (not always, but more than not) working to succeed at climbing the ladder rather than achieving a vision, because much of the time they don’t have a vision.
Trust is vital for leadership to succeed. The workers need to trust the leaders—and they can only do this if the leaders trust them. The quickest way for leaders to lose their followers is to not trust them, to micromanage the team and prevent the team members from using their originality and creativity freely and with recognition. Good leaders do not worry about their workers talking to the leaders’ superiors directly. In fact, they take pride that their team members take the initiative to do so. Managers, on the other hand, feel the need to control and oftentimes throttle even the minutest bits of information through themselves, making sure that they are a single point of contact to upper levels of management. This mistrust of the workers is obvious and a huge detriment to morale. Oftentimes sold as a way to “show a common voice,” it rarely is. It reveals, instead, a lack of leadership training and skill. It was pervasive within NASA’s management core in the 2010s.
MOD was not immune to this decline into “control by management.” In the past, MOD was a significant source of leaders for NASA. Later, it was a significant source of managers. NASA’s inability to bring programs to fruition was potentially attributable to this trend. Certainly, the political climate is a direct hindrance to the success of NASA’s objectives, but this should not be used as an excuse. If you study the history of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle… they all had significant political opponents and teetered on the brink on numerous occasions. They were pushed through and saved by strong leadership—not by management explanations, bullet charts, and telling politicians what they wanted to hear.
