Organizational Communication Imperatives: Lessons from the Space Program

by Phillip Tompkins

 I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. President John F. Kennedy -May 25, 1961

Phillip Tompkins performed organizational communication research at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in the late 1960's and then again in the early 1990's. He compares the communication processes, which put man on the moon to those, which caused the NASA Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986.

Wernher von Braun and his group of German scientists (Paperclip 120) were brought to the United States during WWII. Von Braun was the director of MSFC when it opened in 1960. Wernher's team was responsible for the U.S. winning the space race and achieving President Kennedy's challenge in 1969. He used three principles to accomplish this task and build his organization.

Monday Notes

Von Braun asked his lab directors for a one-page note summarizing the week's progress and problems to be on his desk by Monday morning. These lab directors were removed from him by at least one layer of management. Simplicity was the key. No forms just the three R's (Right, wRong, Recommend). Von Braun read each note, wrote comments in the margins, photocopied all the notes, and gave complete copies back to each lab director! Benefits:

1) Kept everyone informed about progress and problems.

2) Encouraged lateral communication between the lab directors.

3) It let everyone know what the "Boss" thought about the problems (feedback).

Automatic Responsibility

Von Braun said that at the Marshall Center the laboratories, "have full cognizance and responsibility for all efforts that fall within the purview of their respective disciplines…[The lab director] is expected automatically to participate in all projects that involve his discipline and to carry his work through to its conclusion." This means that there was no my job and your job. It was OUR job and if I found a problem, then I was responsible for finding solution. If I lack the technical expertise to solve the problem, then I had the responsibility for communicating it up the line to the top management.

Penetration/Sensing

This was a process of penetrating the organization and suppliers beyond your specific area. In an effort to discover what's going inside and outside the organization. Listening to people within the organization two-levels above and two-levels below. Listening to people outside the organization (suppliers) for what's happen which could affect the mission.

Issues Which Led to the Challenger Accident

In the years following von Braun's departure from MSFC in 1970, NASA stopped using the Monday notes, and the concepts of Automatic Responsibility & Penetration. It had outgrown and forgot what had made them successful. Tompkins calls this phenomenon "Organizational Forgetting." Through the change in leadership and personnel the organization left behind it's founding values. NASA became political with one hand not knowing what the other hand was doing. Tompkins writes, "Instead of pressing the contractor to prove that Challenger would fly, they insisted that Thiokol prove it would not fly."

The lack of Monday Notes or it's equivalent communication process allowed for two things to naturally occur within NASA. The first thing is "Uncertainty Absorption." This is a process in communication where as a story is told it changes. As I report problems to my boss, he doesn't want to paint as bleak picture to his boss, so he changes problems to minor concerns. Thus by the time it gets to the top, we aren't having any problems…everything is running smoothly. Or so it appears!

NASA end up having a disaster on the 25^th shuttle mission and management said, "We didn't know!" Roger Boisjoly (Engineer at Morton Thiokol) knew there were problems with the O-rings after shuttle mission number 2. This brings up the second thing, which occurred at NASA, "Plausible Deniability." As long as I don't have a document like Monday Notes, I can then deny that I had any knowledge of and therefore any responsibility for the situation. Without proof you can't blame me, even if it is my area of responsibility.

Monday Notes, Automatic Responsibility, and Penetration are practices anyone can implement in any organization and transform the culture. With these concepts…we reached the MOON…without them we lost seven LIVES!

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