Tag: nasa

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Leadership Moments

Leadership Moments from NASA: Achieving the Impossible
by Dr. Dave Williams and Elizabeth Howell. Only with true leadership could NASA thrive in the face of certainly immense challenges, budget cuts, the loss of public interest and fatal accidents. Look no further than how NASA’s leadership proved over and over how they could reengineer their organizational mission and thrive.

Leadership Moments from NASA: Achieving the Impossible by Dr. Dave Williams and Elizabeth Howell

Dr. Dave Williams is an astronaut, pilot, ER doctor, scientist, and CEO. Dave has flown in space twice and is the former Director of Space & Life Sciences at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. In addition, he has received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the Langley Research Center Superior Accomplishment Award.

Elizabeth Howell, PhD teaches at Algonquin College and in addition, at the Professional Development Institute at The University of Ottawa.

Accordingly, Leadership Moments from NASA dives into the leadership culture of this internationally famous organization. In addition, they examine the leadership styles and insights of NASA senior executives spanning five decades of human spaceflight result in lessons learned from critical moments.

Certainly the most unique aspect in this book is the entire world watched NASA birth and initial projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo culminating in landing on the moon and returning astronauts safely to earth.

Talk about global competition. Lessons from Sputnik truly changed America overnight. Honestly, overnight due to the impact of the cold war era. Their goal of racing to the moon is just extraordinary. NASA’s space mission is as much a story of leadership and teamwork as it is a story of exploration and discovery.

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Education Innovation Reading TED

Latest Read: Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol. I am very impressed with the messages in this book. Majoring in astrophysics at Cornell, Ozan was also serving on the operations team for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers project. He really is a rocket scientist.

Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

Ozan went to law school and today teaches at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.

So, when did you first learn to correctly breath? Yes, breath. Can you recall learning how to think? Well, Ozan will teach, as the book title implies like a rocket scientist.

Likewise, you will certainly appreciate learning that scientific thinking can position you for success in life.

Ozan delivers the opportunity to improve how your approach, perceive, analyze, and act in our very chaotic, and complex world.

This book’s insights are across three sections: Launch, Accelerate, and Achieve. Each provides rich examples from a scientific mindset. This will provide new thinking for many.

Chapter 1 Flying the Fact of Uncertainty

Chapter 1 provides a great introduction to NASA thinking. Tackling the identification of uncertainties, Ozan introduces benefits of best-case and worst-case scenarios. This is great thinking for rocketry. In addition, this addresses risk mitigation via redundancies (and deploying margins of safety) that can easily be applied to many organizations.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: The Last American Hero

The Last American Hero: The Remarkable Life of John Glenn by Alice George. What can you say to a boy growing up in Ohio during the 1970s about astronaut John Glenn? Back then the word ‘hero’ was simply enough.

The Last American Hero: The Remarkable Life of John Glenn

I can recall in grade school learning about John Glenn becoming the first American astronaut to circle the globe. The country was locked into a space race with the Soviet Union.

Recalling Neil Armstrong, another Ohio boy growing up just 80 miles south of my hometown would land on the moon. Glenn and Armstrong proved to me growing up in Ohio you could change the world.

The early life of John Glenn is interesting. His roots providing him with support and curiosity that served him well in life.

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Design Education Globalization Milwaukee Reading

Latest read: The Wisdom of Crowds

James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds proves useful in understanding the impact (both positive and negative) regarding knowledge of isolated individuals vs. collective intelligence that shapes business, economies, societies and nations.

Surowiecki opens the book with a great example of the surprising “wisdom” possessed by groups of people. The book is a easy, enjoyable read.

As much as I enjoyed the learning I was somewhat more interested in learning the faults of crowds…specifically his analysis of NASA and the Columbia tragedy. To some extent the exact same lessons can be lifted from NASA and applied to Watergate, the highly intelligent crowd in the White House of Nixon’s inner circle.

The NASA “crowd” knew the danger yet did not as a group act to save the lives of their astronauts. In this lesson, I’m not convinced of the blanket approach to the wisdom of crowds. But Surowiecki is able to relay a number of cases in which this applies in business and societies.

The ability of crowds to outsmart a individual experts on any given topic ultimately supports the strength of communities, but as noted above even groups of specialists with graduate degrees have the ability to ignore their collective wisdom.