NASA CASE STUDY

EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP CHARATERISTICS

BUSM 1282 – PROJECT MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP
MOISES SOARES S3628544

ADITYA PANCHAL S3676334

MOEEN RIAZ S3632154

MOHAMAD KADDAH S3611163

MMUHNAD QASIM S3614692

INTRODUCTION
• What is a successful project?

• “How effectively a project meets its objectives and that it is delivered within the
constraints of scope, time, cost and quality.” (PMI 2013, p 35)

• Is it enough to just manage the Iron Triangle?

CASE STUDY OVERVIEW
• Columbia NASA launch project was a routine space center maintenance trip
meant to last 7 days.

• Launch was deemed to be a success.

• During review of launch it was noticed that the insulation was separated from
the spaceship and struck underside of the left wing.

• Project team and experts were ignored and it as stated that the issue was
insignificant

• While entering the Earth’s atmosphere at 10,000 miles hour Columbia Space
ship Disintegrated killing all astronauts.
DYNAMIC LEADERSHIP PYRAMID

BUILD VISION

NURTURE
COLLABORATION

PROMOTE
PERFORMANCE

CULTIVATE LEARNING

ENSURE RESULTS
 BUILD VISION

• Build vision - ‘To define the destination and purpose of the project.’

• Steps of building vision;

- Motivation statement

• Describes the initial environment which will assist the project leader to focus on
a specific situation

- Vision statement

Describes the overall goals, purpose and value of the project.

• Value; is the alignment of human personality and organization culture

• Leadership value; develop clear vision, define and obtain appropriate

characteristic to effectively lead the team. (Waitlay 2003)
 CASE STUDY

• Colombia Space shuttle’s value is considered unsuccessful

• Luck of leadership characteristics ; trust, empathy and poor communication

skills

• The Shuttle explosion was because of ineffective decision making of

unsuccessful leader

• Conclusion
 NURTURE COLLABORATION

• “Collaboration, based on communication and human interaction, is crucial for

project success.” (Löhr et al. 2017)

• Team Building – 1.Storming, 2.Norming, 3.Performing.

• As the PMBOK ® Guide explains, “Outcomes of team building include mutual

trust, high quality of information exchange, better decision making, and effective
project control” (Project Management Institute, 2008, p. 418).

• Recommendations – Team Norming workshop. (Juli 2010)

CAUSES AND IMPACT OF LACK OF COLLABORATION BY NASA
LEADERS

• Organizational cultural factors – Negligence towards “Bad News” , chain of

command communications, Encouraged 100% general agreement, importance
to rank and status over expertise.

• NASA’s culture did not allow the major concerns reach top decision-makers.

• Managerial style adopted according to the type of project:

1. Type A – Low-Tech Projects.

2. Type B – Medium-Tech Projects

3. Type C – High-Tech Projects - NASA

4. Type D – Super High-Tech Projects (Shenhar 1992)

 RECOMMENDED MANAGEIAL STYLE ADOPTED BY NASA
LEADERS

• Implementing Type D managerial style for project with high innovation

risks –

 Gaining detailed information.

 Assuming enormous number of problems in development phase.

 Developing open communication network.

 Tracking and recording problems in every test phase of the project

(Shenhar 1992)
 PROMOTING PERFORMANCE

• The third principle is all about creating an environment ,that is helpful for team
member for promoting performance.

• For promoting performing in any project, “The performing team” makes the
difference.

• Basic rules to comply with and apply

 Empower your team

 Be a role Model

 Creating right environment

 Result-oriented Thinking

 Collaboration
 CASE STUDY

• Overview in context of promoting performance

• Issue in Previous flights.

• Crew member knew about that specific issue.( Elizabeth Howell)

“ The project was a complete failure in term of Third principle of pyramid”

-Trust issue

- Leadership (Mcdonough III, J 1990)

 HOW PROMOTING PERFORMANCE BE USEFUL?

• Empowerment of team member can save the disaster up to some extent.

(Wilemon, D 1994)

• Leader was not Role Model here.

• Solution-oriented thinking?

• Creating the right environment in any project can bring positivity to project.
 CULTIVATE LEARNING

PROMOTE • The Optimum scenario for a project is acquiring a performing

PERFORMANCE
team that has the ability to cope with any obstacle.

CULTIVATE LEARNING “To yield the desired results you have to cultivate learning as they
cannot be lasting performance without learning and they cannot be
resolved without performance.”
(Lloyd-Walker & Walker 2011)
ENSURE RESULTS
 CASE STUDY: LEADERSHIP ISSUES

• Throughout the Columbia project, three clear leadership issues were present:

1. Team members were not encouraged to speak out and be honest about the
situation.

2. Project team felt their opinions were not recognized and that they didn’t have
upper management support.

3. They did not utilize lessons learnt from previous project.

RECOMMENDED EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS

• Three leadership characteristics that can be utilized to handle the previous

issues mentioned include:

1. Provide a supportive environment (i.e formal training, brainstorming etc)

2. Effective listening skills will encourage team members to speak out when
mistakes are found.

3. Empowering team members to provide feedback and trusting the teams

experts.

“Cultivating learning starts with the project leader.” (Juli 2011, p.66)
 ENSURE RESULTS

• It is an accumulated characteristic from every principle in the Dynamic Leadership

Pyramid.

• It is not only about ensuring results of the final project deliverable. Project success is
based on the success of many results from every part of the project (Juli 2011).

• It is an ongoing characteristic to adapt from the first day of the project to:
 First, Stay alert, focus, and double check to ensure all project activities contribute to
the project objectives and directed toward the project vision.
 Second, always ensure that interim results are tangible and point it up to keep the
project alive. Make sure that the project team feel interim success and award them (Juli
2011).

• Ensuring Interim results provide benefits related to five principles such as:
 Move the team closer to realize the project vision (principle 1).
 Enhance collaboration (principle 2).
 Boost performance (principle 3).
 Provide learning opportunity and encourage innovation (principle 4).
CAUSES AND IMPACT OF POOR ENSURING RESULTS BEHAVIOR
BY NASA
Space project are so risky with a deadly consequences. Ensuring results more than once of every detail
in the project is fatal. However, in Columbia shuttle project poor ensuring process were caused by
(Donovan & Green 2003) :

• Time pressure impact on ensuring tasks results:

The senior management consider any delay unacceptable at all which went down to the project
engineers. Working under such a time pressure lowered the quality of ensuring interim results.

• Poor risk assessment ensuring impact:

NASA managers and engineers did not consider risks in the same way. The risks of foam debris shedding
and foam strikes that caused previous space project incident (The Challenger incident) were considered
differently from the top management perspective. Project leaders did not ensure the risk assessment
process and avoiding previous risks. They should communicated with all involved stakeholders to ensure
identifying risks magnitude properly.

• Failures of organizational culture to ensure communication:

Their organizational culture emphasized only chain of command communications. Leaders did not ensure
the existence of an open and explicit communication channels during the project lifetime. Instead, they
created a culture where the project team voice cannot be heard. As a result, project engineers were
ignored when they tried to point up their safety concerns to the management.
 CHARACTERISTICS BEHAVIOR NASA LEADERS SHOULD
APPLIED: BASED ON THE 5TH PRINCIPLE

Applying the dynamic leader characteristic of ensuring results by NASA project

leaders could prevent the disaster if they applied the following points:

• Ensure and emphasize the project’s interim results not just rushing toward the
final deliverable to satisfy the senior management.

• Ensure better clear communication channels between all parties involved in the
project.

• Ensure better risk assessment and identification process.

• Ensure applying lessons learned from previous projects.

REFERENCES
• Waitley, J 2003,’ Is innovation dependent on the hierarchical leadership pyramid?,’ Journal
of leadership studies,’ vol. 10, pp. 57-59

• Carver, S 2018,’The shuttle case-Leadership under stress,’ Association for project

management, vol 2, pp. 23-34

• •Löhr et al., 2017. Enhancing communication and collaboration in collaborative

projects through conflict prevention and management systems. Organizational
Dynamics, pp.<xocs:firstpage xmlns:xocs=""/>

• •Juli, T., 2010. Leadership principles for project success, Boca Raton: Taylor &
Francis.

• •Shenhar, A. (1992). Project management style and the Space Shuttle program (part
2): a retrospective look. Project Management Journal, 23(1), 32–37.

• McDonough III, J 1990, ‘journal of engineering and technology management: an

investigation of the relationship between project performance and characteristics of
project leaders’, pp. 237-260.

• •Gemmill, Wilemon, D 1994, ‘Research Technology management: the hidden style of

leadership in technical team management’, vol. 37, Issue 6.
REFERENCES
• Waitley, J 2003,’ Is innovation dependent on the hierarchical leadership pyramid?,’ Journal
of leadership studies,’ vol. 10, pp. 57-59

• Carver, S 2018,’The shuttle case-Leadership under stress,’ Association for project

management, vol 2, pp. 23-34

• •Löhr et al., 2017. Enhancing communication and collaboration in collaborative

projects through conflict prevention and management systems. Organizational
Dynamics, pp.<xocs:firstpage xmlns:xocs=""/>

• •Juli, T., 2010. Leadership principles for project success, Boca Raton: Taylor &
Francis.

• •Shenhar, A. (1992). Project management style and the Space Shuttle program (part
2): a retrospective look. Project Management Journal, 23(1), 32–37.

• McDonough III, J 1990, ‘journal of engineering and technology management: an

investigation of the relationship between project performance and characteristics of
project leaders’, pp. 237-260.

• •Gemmill, Wilemon, D 1994, ‘Research Technology management: the hidden style of

leadership in technical team management’, vol. 37, Issue 6.