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Management Speak: I’m challenging you to come up with a solution to …”
Translation: I need to pass the buck … unless you succeed, of course.
IS Survivalist Kanakatti Mahesh Subramanya surmounted the challenge of translating this conundrum.

The third-finest movie I’ve seen about the space program was First Man. Marvelous as it was, it was biography, telling the story of Neil Armstrong, a quintessentially American hero.

The second-finest was probably Hidden Figures, about the team of mathematicians who made the early missions possible, overcoming the dual prejudices they faced for being both African American and female. It is an incredible story, about the space program but even more to help us see that while we still have quite a long way to go in overcoming prejudice, we clearly have come quite a long way from where we were.

These two stories rate second and third because they’re about individuals. Remarkable individuals we should remember and honor, but individuals nonetheless.

For my money the truly outstanding work is Apollo 13 — not because it’s a better piece of film-making but because it tells the story of NASA as a profoundly capable organization — one that could not only achieve the remarkable, but one that could adapt to the most intense challenges, and overcome them because and only because it was a profoundly capable organization.

I’m admittedly biased — I once had the privilege of hearing Jim Lovell and Gene Kranz speak about the mission and the movie, for which they served as consultants to Ron Howard to make sure he got it right.

While we’re on the subject, take a few minutes to read Randy Cassingham’s homage to Chris Kraft, not because it honors a man who deserves to be remembered in the same breath as these others, but because it describes his achievement and contribution: he designed Mission Control — not just the facility, but the roles, operating procedures, and all the rest of what made putting human beings into space possible.

In 2015, when Scott Lee and I wrote The Cognitive Enterprise, I’m embarrassed to tell you neither of us thought to mention NASA as the archetypical example.

But it is. From everything I know and have read, NASA is a seriously cognitive enterprise. It’s an organization that acts with purpose, having clear goals and then sensing, interpreting, and responding to changing circumstances so as to achieve them. Which is how it is that NASA landed Mars rovers that exceeded their planned mission lives by 2,500%; launched a spacecraft (Cassini) for a planned four-year tour of Saturn that lasted 20; and that sent the New Horizons spacecraft to visit both Pluto and the Kuiper belt, thereby inspiring astrophysicist and Queen lead guitarist Brian May to record a song named after its destination — Ultima Thule.

What’s most remarkable about NASA — and what we should, as Americans, be particularly proud of — isn’t what it’s achieved but how easily it might have failed to achieve it.

Like all large organizations, government agencies easily slide into bureaucracy. This happened to NASA in the course of its history, resulting in a sad string of mission failures that ranged from embarrassing — the Mars Climate Orbiter missed the red planet because some calculations used the English measurement system while others used metric units — to the tragic Columbia and Challenger shuttle disasters. Richard Feynman’s analysis of the latter demonstrates that the core failure was of the organization as a whole, not of incompetent engineers.

What’s extraordinary about NASA is that its leaders didn’t pretend, didn’t duck and cover, and didn’t make politically expedient decisions. They took serious steps to understand what it was about the organization that encouraged mistakes. They then accomplished the truly remarkable — they fixed the organization, restoring its cognitive essence.

KJR is, at its core, about managing and leading effective organizations. As one of its readers you might lead and manage an organization; you might either enjoy the results of good leadership or cope with the consequences of the other kind; or you might fall into both categories.

To the extent you’re responsible for running an effective organization, and even more so to the extent you’re responsible for fixing an organization that’s less effective than it needs to be, you could do worse than use NASA’s leaders as your role models.

Far worse.

Also to the extent you need to fix an ineffective organization, a caution: Effectiveness is the least-stable state of organization. Among the reasons: organizational effectiveness asks everyone involved to subordinate their personal ambitions to the larger aims of the organization as a whole.

Which, among other challenges, means defining the larger aims of the organization as a whole so they’re inspiring enough to make this choice worthwhile.

I have, in my day, gone through lots of leadership training.

I’ve learned how to recognize excellent personal and team performance with recognition and a variety of financial and non-financial incentives. How to deal with difficult situations, like personal crises, policy violations, substandard performance, and terminations. How to facilitate meetings. Delegate tasks. Coach employees who make mistakes without demoralizing them.

Serious stuff.

I have to be fair. I’ve also received training in how to provide small rewards and incentives as morale-builders, such as T-shirts, pizza, or tickets to movies or plays. The small stuff is important in creating an atmosphere where good work and good attitude are appreciated.

But in all my training, I never once heard anyone talk about the single most common situation most managers have to deal with: Minor infractions.

I’m heartily sick of the phrase, “… potentially leading to termination.” Regular readers will recall an employee who received a one-week suspension without pay for sending a joke over his company’s e-mail. As Mom used to say, they made a federal case out of it.

Have you established techniques for dealing with minor infractions? Small stuff like lateness for meetings, dead-horse-beating in discussions, or slightly too long lunch breaks? It’s important to do so. If you let minor matters go unchallenged, they eventually grow into significant problems. On the other hand, if every time you see some trivial problem you call the offender into your office for a solemn conversation, you’ve established an image … as a pompous twit.

So if you can neither ignore the problem nor counsel the offender, what can you do?

I learned the answer the hard way. After a reorganization I walked into the weekly staff meeting of one of my new teams 5 minutes late. Another attendee, who’d apparently arrived 4 minutes late, breathed a sigh of relief and said, cheerily, “You bring the donuts next week!”

A front-line supervisor in a company with whom I’ve consulted has a similar strategy: When someone breaks the rules he holds a “kangaroo court” and when the accused is found guilty they impose the cookie penalty. You guessed it — the guilty party has to provide cookies for everyone.

Donuts or cookies, it was minor, good-natured, expected, and public. Since the penalty directly benefited the team it boosted morale in the bargain, even if it did harm the aorta a little bit. And these are the keys.

Keeping your penalties small emphasizes your own sense of perspective. Mom would have approved — no federal case.

Keeping the atmosphere good-natured reinforces the desirability of an open, casual environment where you don’t lead by intimidation.

Unlike rewards, where inventiveness is the key, minor penalties should establish a team tradition. Traditions are important in building teams, just as with any other kind of community.

It’s important to publicly razz the trouble-maker in this kind of situation. You get to make the point to everyone that whatever the behavior is, it isn’t appropriate. You again reinforce an open communications environment where nobody has to measure every word they speak.

It’s important for the penalty to benefit other team members, which is why desserts are such a great punishment, as is making the guilty party take notes at the next meeting. Since the offender does something good for teammates, the sentence amounts to community service and builds up the team (whereas each minor infraction incrementally damages team cohesiveness).

And although some companies (for example, those whose IT departments gripe about screen-savers) don’t seem to value it very much, you get to make the workplace just a wee bit more fun.

Maybe you’re the kind of sourpuss who doesn’t see the value of all this. If so, I have the perfect solution.

You get to bring the next plate of cookies.