Nov 16 2007
WCBA - How NASA Uses Storytelling to Promote Success
At the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) today, Dr. Ed Hoffman from NASA shared how NASA uses storytelling to share knowledge and develop leaders. Ed is Director of the NASA Academy Program which is part of APPEL or Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership.
Ed started out by describing NASA’s new mission statement which can be summed up in one word - “Exploration.”
Ed showed a short video about NASA’s mission to return to the Moon by the year 2020 which highlighted some of NASA’s challenges, such as:
- what is the “story” of the project?
- how do you plan a 30-year project?
- how do you build something robust enough for technology that isn’t developed yet and you know is going to change?
- how do you pass knowledge along to the next generation?
The Academy was established to build leadership capability for individuals and project/program teams with the goal to:
- provide a common frame of reference for all NASA employees, provide and enhance critical job skills, support porgram and project teams
- supplement foral educational programs
Ed talked about what makes a good story. A good story:
- starts with a problem/conflict/challenge
- describe a unique experience
- describe concrete actions by people
- makes a point
- arrives at some basic truth
To illustrate his point about stories, he showed another video about Gene Krantz who was program director for the Apollo program. The video didn’t show their greatest success of putting a man on the Moon, instead it showed their greatest failure which was the Apollo 1 fire which killed astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. In the video, Gene remembers what he told his team on the day after the disaster. “No one said no - and this won’t happen again. In the future we will be both tough and competent. We will write that on our blackboards and we will never erase it.”
Ed’s team sponsors a number of knowledge sharing activities, such as conferences and forums, multimedia, and publications that emphasize the vital role of stories. Ed said that it is important to discuss both successes and failures and he likes to see a 7 to 1 ratio of success stories to failure stories. People need to think about what’s going right and what’s going wrong - and the community needs to learn that it’s ok to share and collaborate.
In the end, it comes down to trust and the social connection between people. People must trust one another enough to share their successes and failures. In addition, you must impact social norms that learning is ongoing, that there are resources out there to help you, and to get teams to understand how to go beyond the boundaries of their expertise. Finally, it is critical to build a network and community where knowledge sharing and collaboration is the norm.
[go to the APPEL website for more information and stories]
