It’s truly astounding to me that our country went to the moon forty years ago. As I watched the news this morning, one thing that really made me sit up is that they made the journey in a craft with far less computing power than any mobile phone on the market today. Not much room for error there.
So how did they do it? Incredible, well-coordinated teamwork powered by three principles that can be applied to complex business and technical initiatives in your own executive sphere of influence.
Map. Big vision set by the executive and laid out in stretch milestones. This is where the plan came together – a visual roadmap that everyone from the junior engineer to the senior manager could point to and process and say “I’m working on that piece right there and I see how I fit in the bigger scheme of things.” This is especially important to managing buy-in at all levels of the organization because it helps validate members contributions to a winning team.
Measure. Constant re-assessment of what is working and what is not working. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
Communicate. Every team was on the same page at the same time. These guys were experts at building communication processes and systems. In the context of the moon landing, think about the relatively simple concept of a flight checklist. Everyone on the critical path is on the radio working the list. Now expand that relatively discrete moment of communication process Zen and expand it across the hardware and software development cycles that went into a 10-year effort that resulted in two-hours of surface time on that first landing.
Yeah. WOW!!!
We’re thinking of selling those funny headsets to our clients.
