This weekend, I heard a story that really spoke to me.  It is a story I’ve heard before, but this time I heard it anew, given what has been going on in this discussion.  I’d like to share it all with you…

One day, a man walked by a building where three men were cutting stones.  He went up to the first, seemingly unhappy man, and asked “What are you doing?”  The stone cutter replied, saying “breaking rocks.”

The man walked up to the next stone cutter, who seemed to be enjoying his job more than the first.  He asked, “What are you doing?”  The second stone cutter smiled, saying “earning a living.”

Finally the man came to the third stone cutter, who was singing and dancing while cutting his stone.  As before, the man asked “What are you doing?”  The stone cutter joyfully responded, saying building a cathedral!”

For the three stone cutters, it wasn’t the content (cutting stone) of what they were doing that had them excited.  What determined their level of excitement was the context (building a cathedral, etc.) behind their activities.

As I heard the story, I realized that we have not clearly and succinctly defined a context for OpenGoddard activities.  Think about our projects: redoing Goddard’s Wikipedia page, organizing happy hours, mapping the conversations at Goddard… What’s the common context behind our activities?  Are we breaking rocks or are we building a cathedral?

The bumper sticker is an opportunity to proclaim a powerful context for our group!  The sticker serves to remind us why we do what we do AND is an expression of what we’re up to for the rest of the world!

Therefore, this sticker is going to use the “Inspire the Planet” message.  What better way to keep ourselves energized, than to give ourselves something truly amazing to work towards?  This is the final version:

As many of you know, we’ve been working on a bumper sticker for OpenGoddard and have been wrestling with what it should say, what it should look like, etc.

In this process, we reminded ourselves that OpenGoddard is about creating a new environment of inspiration and excitement around the work we do here. The message that we’re sending is that every single one of us has a vital role to play in this effort. We all contribute in our own ways, in our own area of expertise!

[Here's] our current iteration:

Please take a look and let me know what you think! FYI, we’re planning on having these available at Yuri’s Night, and I want to have something that draws people to the website to learn about what we’re up to. All comments are welcome – send them to me by COB this Thursday!

Rivers

How to Play

There are two ways to participate in the 2009 Mission Madness Tournament. First, visit the website, http://www.nasa.gov/missionmadness, from March 9th – 18th to learn which missions are competing head to head, print your bracket and make your predictions. You can print out as many brackets as you like to evaluate endless winning scenarios.

Second, return to the website and vote for your favorite missions during each round. You are allowed to vote for your favorite missions as many times as you like, so be sure to support your favorite missions to help them advance deep into the tournament. As voting is completed for each round, the winning missions advance allowing you to see how your predictions compare to all of the voters.

Schedule

Key Dates:

March 9th – 18th Brackets available on the web site with the head to head line-ups for each region.

March 19th - 20th Round 1 Voting

March 23rd – 24th Round 2 Voting

March 26th – 27th Sweet Sixteen Voting

March 30th – 31st Quarter Final Round Voting

April 2nd – 3rd Semi Final Round Voting

April 5th – 6th Final Round Voting

April 7th NASA EDGE names 2009 Mission Madness Winning Mission

NASA EDGE: 2009 Mission Madness Selection Show

After applying a series of both computer formulas and human metrics to the vast body of NASA Missions, Chris, Blair and Franklin reveal the opening round lineup of 64 competing missions for the 2009 Mission Madness Tournament. Sixteen individual missions competing in each of the four divisions (Nebula, Stellar, Galaxy and Horizon) provide key matchups between missions past, present and future.

NASA EDGE is joined by three prominent Mission Madness Analysts. Miles Obrien (former CNN Reporter), Melvin Ferebee (NASA Langley) and Keith Cowing (NASA WATCH) give their unique take on the how early rounds will shake out and which missions will remain competitive deep into the tournament. Further analysis is provided by NASA EDGE Facebook friends. The true final four will not be revealed until April 4th, but Chris, Blair and Franklin share their predictions for which missions they think will compete to be the 2009 Mission Madness Champion. Until April 8th, it’s up to you.

This year, Middle Distance Runner will scatter indie-pop, multi-layered sounds through exploded views of galaxies and dozens of other NASA expositions. Beats infused by DJ Scientific will twist through a garden of rockets boasting a massive, 40-foot Delta rocket and a tree planted by the Queen of England.

Yuri’s Night World Space Parties celebrate humanity’s achievements in space. Each April, parties around the world mark the anniversary of mankind’s first foray into space (April 12, 1961) and the first Space Shuttle flight (April 12, 1981). Goddard hosted Yuri’s Night DC for the first time in 2008.

Yuri’s Night is not a spectator sport. If you are coming, you are dancing. Galactic attire is encouraged. Get in the mood, get your grove on and come on down.

Tickets are $10 per person - get them at: dc.yurisnight.net.  Also check out the DC Yuri’s Night Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=133741270446&ref=mf! ]]> http://opengoddard.com/events/yuris-night/feed/ http://opengoddard.com/discuss/talk-innovation-with-peter-hughes/ http://opengoddard.com/discuss/talk-innovation-with-peter-hughes/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:07:33 +0000 Kevin Fisher http://opengoddard.com/?p=164 Goddard’s Chief Technologist, Peter Hughes, will meet with OpenGoddard participants on Wednesday, March 4 at noon in the Goddard Library, for a dialogue about innovation and innovation programs at Goddard. This forum will also be a place to invite conversation about the recent YouTube video criticizing NASA for stifling innovation. In case you have not heard, a video was posted on YouTube a few weeks back and received a great deal of attention. Wayne Hale, Deputy Associate Administrator for Strategic Partnerships at JSC, posted the video and his thoughts about it on his blog. He wrote that he found it “extraordinarily funny and not at all funny”. The video was part of a report out to JSC management regarding recommendations to improve innovation.

We _____ Mission Success

We… what? Exactly. Everyone at Goddard has their own contribution to make toward our Center’s success:

Engineers __design__ Mission Success
Guards __secure__ Mission Success
Mathemeticians __derive__ Mission Success
Rivers __loves__ Mission Success

You get the idea. We think this slogan will help people realize and express how their unique talents help us all achieve a common goal.

We’ll start the campaign with a bumper sticker that reads:

We __DRIVE__ Mission Success

(We’re so clever, yes, we know.) :)

The sticker (or magnet or static cling window thing) will point people to opengoddard.com, where we’ll describe the campaign and how they can be a part of it. Later on, we’ll make T-shirts, mouse pads, and other products where people can fill in the blank themselves.

The next steps are to design, secure funding for, and distribute the bumper sticker, and to dream up more ideas for what comes after that (badge tags, websites, video projects… billboards?)

If you’ve got an idea, or want to get involved, comment below!

Here’s what we talked about. Let’s keep this discussion going!

Key Points

OpenGoddard’s key strength is in how it brings together dynamic people from diverse backgrounds on Center. Many said they benefit simply from exchanging ideas with others.

OpenGoddard’s other strength is it’s “not on the org chart”. As an unofficial group, it has freedom to try unique ideas. Similarly, it shouldn’t do what others at Goddard are already paid to do.

There used to be a culture at Goddard that encouraged people to “stay after 5pm”, strengthening the community through social events and shared interests. OpenGoddard’s projects or events, or mere existence, may serve to restore part of that culture.

General direction for new projects and events: create opportunities for people to meet, interact, and learn about other parts of the Center.

Potential New Projects

Organize ‘on-campus field trips’ to facilities like the NSSDC. Meet at a facility, meet the staff, get a guided tour, and ask questions. Facilities would fund and organize the events; OpenGoddard could develop a basic event format, encourage facilities to host them, and then help promote them, singly or as a series.

Support ‘community-building’ activities: The Public Affairs office plans to release a ’space-book’ site (social network for Goddard employees) this spring. The TV production group, meanwhile, would like to record Goddard employees on video sharing why they work at GSFC. One-minute stories could be shared internally or on “space-book” profile pages; longer pieces could appear on YouTube. OpenGoddard could organize a ‘kickoff’ event for one or both activities: introduce employees to social networking, encourage them to tape their one-minute videos, and let them mingle in real life.

‘Lightning talk’ events: Let Goddard employees introduce themselves in their native language: PowerPoint! Employees present their current or past work, personal background/interests, or an interesting idea in five minutes or less.

Write a concise definition of OpenGoddard: whether we call it a “Mission statement”, “elevator speech”, or “haiku”, describe what OpenGoddard is and does in sixty seconds / fifty words or less.

Well, first, let me share a model that I’m borrowing and applying to an organization, in this case to NASA.  Let’s say that there’s a finite amount of knowledge available in the universe.  NASA, as an organization, knows a certain subset of that knowledge: how to launch space shuttles, how to study the Earth, how to build spacecraft, etc.  Those are all things that NASA knows, and we know that we know it!

Then there’s a second set of knowledge in the universe, the stuff that NASA knows it doesn’t know.  In other words, NASA doesn’t know how to run a Toyota assembly line, how to do brain surgery, or how to feed all the people of the world.  This is all fine, as NASA isn’t intended to know how to do these things.  Of course, some of the things in this category are things NASA is working to learn: how to send humans back to the moon is a good example of something we currently know that we don’t know.

Then, finally, the third category of knowledge is the stuff that we, as an organization, don’t know that we don’t know.  Think of these as blind spots – the stuff that’s completely hidden from your view, that you have no idea even exists.  Also consider for a moment that perhaps this is the knowledge that is really key to reaching another unimaginable level of success.  Consider that there are things hidden from NASA’s view that would make a huge difference in the success of the agency.

Now, the good news is that in looking at this model of an organization, one could also propose that there may be folks within the agency who have this knowledge.  One could propose that the key to success is for folks to transform this knowledge from individual knowledge to organizational knowledge.  One could also propose that this is what great leadership is all about.

I think I’ve discovered one of NASA’s blind spots.  I think one of the things that we don’t know as an organization is the importance of human development.  Look at the accident reports from the two shuttle tragedies, for example.  These reports describe two different technical problems, yet they have a very common thread: a concern about culture and communication, how people weren’t able to work effectively with one another.  In response, instead of training people to relate to one another, we train them in more processes and procedures intended to avoid specific technical issues!

As I was thinking about this, I thought about my own education, at least the part that was required to get a job at NASA.  I was a typical engineer, one of those folks only interested in the physics, the math, the engineering.  I didn’t see much of a need to take any sort of human development classes, at least not any that weren’t absolutely required.  It dawned on me that it is no wonder we have trouble communicating at NASA – the vast majority of us are communicating with each other as if we’re 16 years old!  That’s about when most of us were able to focus our education on the “hard” sciences and stopped having to pay attention to those “soft” sciences and our own human development!  (This is not to say that there are no programs like this at NASA – they’re just way too few and far between!)

So I propose that if we’re going to be an exceptional agency with an unprecedented level of success, we’ve got to take a whole new revolutionary approach to human development.  We have to train our employees in who they are BEING, so that we can all transform how we communicate and how we relate to one another.  That’s the way to lay the foundation for us to achieve a whole new level of success!

Given all of that, I’m building a team that is dedicated to creating a new culture around human development at NASA!

Anyone can join the team, but team members must:

1)      be willing to develop themselves

2)      be a stand for human development in their environment

3)      take action to make a difference in other people’s lives

If you’d like to be part of the team, send me an email at Rivers.Lamb@nasa.gov, or leave a comment below!

This next OpenGoddard project is to create a physical representation and reminder of the inspiration that space exploration provides for the world!  I got the idea from all of the “Choose Civility” car magnets floating around Howard County.  I imagine a similar type of movement - where we create something real in the world that reminds folks to associate space exploration with inspiration!

Looking around Goddard right now, I don’t think that the average employee is really excited about his or her day-to-day job.  If we don’t do anything as a group, there’s no reason to believe that will change.  I imagine a future in which people wake up in the morning and can’t wait to get to work at Goddard - a place where they are really excited and inspired because it is where they can make a difference in the world!

The OpenGoddard group met this week to go over this basic premise behind the project, and below is a short synopsis of that meeting.

Hypothesis: We are running under the assumption that people within NASA don’t feel inspired by their work while the people on the outside are totally in awe of the thought of NASA.

What is the end result?  Reminder of the excitement and inspiration of space exploration.

Where do you find support when a fresh start is needed?  New conversations are needed to foster positive thinking!  But within that there are also realities (i.e. Congress)

Thoughts on Inspiration:

Are expectations of working at NASA too high?

Maybe more management of expectation is needed

Could be done in coordination with Goddard’s 50^th anniversary

Catch phrase: Small steps to achieve the impossible – reacting to the idea that children are in awe of what NASA does

We want to remind the people inside of Goddard what the outside sees

Sometimes we lose track of why we are here

Need to create a culture where you can’t wait to go to work

Obamaesque message like “Yes We Can” or “Hope for the Future” – seeing the possibilities and sparking people to look towards the future

Want to create a mindset similar to what scientist/engineers think – We can overcome any problem – we can make the possible happen

“Choose Possibility” as a way to keep going

Organizationally, we’ll probably have four teams

• Design – what does the message look like?
• Production – what is this thing?
• Outreach/advertisement – message and coordinate with other NASA centers
• Funding – where is the money coming from?

For next week:

What is the direction we want to head? What is the message? What is it not?

PLEASE use the comment link here to leave your thoughts on the project!