Attending PMIWDC, I met former Astronaut and inductee into the International Hall of Fame, Colonel Mike Mullane. He is an author of “Riding Rockets“, and “Do your Ears Pop in Space“.

Col. Mullane conveyed that the responsibility and duty all project team members must have to contribute to project success, regardless of their position. He discussed that Astronauts share credit for their success with their team, and despite being the most visible part of the mission, the NASA team extends to the people that man mission control, to the engineers that build the spacecraft, to the specialists that develop and configure human life support systems, to the nutritionists that prepare the meals for the voyage, to the janitors who sweep the floors.  He describes that when it comes to preventing mission risk transforming into issues, the perception of ALL team members must be considered.  This philosopy is fully amplified and fictionally illustrated by the “West Wing” character, Toby Ziegler, who when hearing that the shuttle mission on which his brother was a specialist had problems with the shuttle bay doors remarked, “Mr. President, thank you for your concern, however in space, there is no such thing as a small problem.”

To counter these effects, he described that his first act working with any member of a team is to assure that they understand what Normalization of Deviance, in addition to the consequences that  occur.  Normalization of Deviance was the primary contributing factor to creating both Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters.  The technical reasons for both disasters are well documented and too lengthy to discuss here.  Mike Mullane’s reasoning for why both shuttles experienced catastrophic failure, coincides with my own understanding of why projects fail.  We seldom fail from the technical, we most always overlook management over the implementation.  For the most part this is because the technology is sexy, and we lead ourselves to believe the fallacy that technology works automatically, that it has been tested to work, and should be trusted to always work without failure.This is certainly the case of the “unsinkable” HMS Titanic.

Within a PMI project management approach, one of the core activities to performing Risk Management is Risk Identification. I have been in organizations where Risk Identification was generally overlooked as a point of normalized deviance.  The process requires that we perform a risk assessement, so we do. “We don’t have the time to get our technical staff involved, they will only slow us down to fill out our risk register.” How many times have you seen that?  Why do a risk assessment this way?  “We have to be prepared for the audit.” Who does the audit? Corporate Quality Assurance, who observes that indeed the risk register is up to date, and identified risks are being entered and monitored, and they checkmark the box.  This is a failure waiting to happen from habitual deviance from core principals of the established standard, which enables an organization to place their full trust behind the process in place, with complete disregard to its consequence.  Mike Mullane describes that the only result that comes from this practice is “Predictable Surprise”.

Col Mullane defines Normalization of Deviance as the working or mission environment created when established standards are subverted incrementally over time without consequence, by routinely rewarding shortcuts from the established norm.  As team members continue this practice (normalization), it leads to “predictable surprise”, incursion of risk, technical failure, and in the worst cases complete and catastrophic failure and loss of property and life. To demonstrate his point, Col. Mullane provided the detailed insight of an astronaut and engineer to explain the failures that caused the Challenger disaster, citing specifically that NASA knew that the O-rings had a specific temperature tolerance, and that recovered solid booster rockets were being recovered with burnt interior O-ring walls, something that should never happen. He also described how after recovery of the cockpit, it was discovered that all the panels had their switches in emergency position, meaning that the crew was still alive immediately following the explosion.  He also described that the space shuttle was the first NASA vehicle to not have an emergency egress, unlike former “rocket” style vehicles that had all had emergency capsule escape towers that would pull the capsule off the top of the rocket at nine G’s away from the catastrophic failure of the rest of the rocket.  With the shuttle, this could not happen as it was not part of the shuttle design as any attempt to escape would cause the astronaut to get hit by the shuttle wing.

NASA Engineers began seeking a new way to egress, using rockets.  NASA Engineers tested the “Emergency Egress Fixed Rocket Package” which pulls an astronaut from the shuttle by connecting a rocket, to a lanyard, to a parachute harness to the astronaut.  This apparatus was designed to fire astronaut horizontally from the shuttle door.  Engineers used rockets for this design because rockets HAD ALWAYS been used. It was a maddening and dangerous design.  It took a flight surgeon, not an engineer, playing his role as part of the bigger team to suggest a telescoping firepole, a design that they use on the shuttle today.

This stressed to me the importance of maintaining one’s team presence.  Col. Mullane distinguished the difference between team members who are team players, and those who have chosen to be passengers. He amplified this point by by describing one of his early flights over Vietnam where as a REO (TopGun “Goose” position) and he chose to remaining silent when his pilot called Bingo Fuel (point of safe return to base) and desired to continue to the next objective. Even as a rookie pilot, Col. Mullane knew this was a really bad idea, however he let his pilot’s longevity and experience influence his judgment, and by remaining silent, he chose to be a passenger and not a functioning member of the team. The consequence of this decision was a short landing where the pilot and REO ejected, and the plane crashed in pieces on the runway.

Col. Mullane helped me understand the relation between process and risk, to better understand the projects I manage, and reduce the potential for predictable surprise.  He an excellent keynote speaker with a terrific mastery of his topic. Col. Mullane’s highly inspiring and educational presentation was worthy of the standing ovation that he received from PMI. He is clearly an accomplished deutrolearner (student and teacher within the same body), and explains the traits necessary to use these talents within ourselves to reach the stars.  Within his presentation, he mixed autobiographical elements that demonstrated how we all have the capability to strive for the stars and how destiny was not the primary driver toward him becoming an astronaut. On this point he offered many self-deprecating examples from his high school yearbook where he showed what destiny had to work with. My favorite: the only autograph on the last page read, “You missed Korea, I hope you make Vietnam!”

Web Site of Col. Mike Mullane: http://www.mikemullane.com/