How NASA Builds Teams

Mission Critical Soft Skills

for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams
by Charles J Pellerin
Charlie Pellerin tells a prescient tale about the day he explained to
a workshop about how some people base key decisions on
emotions, while others use logic.
"I cannot believe anyone would make an informed decision using emotions," says
one of the attendees.
To which Pellerin replies: "So, how did you pick your wife, with a questionnaire?"
"As a matter of fact, I did," comes the smart response.
"Ah..." reflects Pellerin in this book, "...engineers."
The story and the implied "breed-apart" view of engineers are pertinent because
they provide a rationale for why Pellerin wrote this book and why, in some
respects, its structured approach is the first cousin of a technical manual.
He explains that many technical people have scant regard for the concept of
teambuilding, which they associate with "touchy-feelyness," preferring instead just
to get on with the job and to perform with excellence.
The trouble with this, he argues, is that the interaction of individuals, how people
gel within a team, and between teams the "social context," as he labels it
underpins the outcome of projects far more than do the constituent technical
skills, especially when things go wrong.
There probably is no better testing ground for this theory than the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA where he was director of the
agency's astrophysics division. And there probably is no better example of what
happens when highly skilled teams of engineers and managers fail to mesh than
the ill-fated, original Hubble Space Telescope mission.
Pellerin used this failure, in which he felt implicated, as a platform for developing
his 4-D Systems approach to analyzing team performance and building, which is
the core of this book. And he used many of its principles, before he had fully
articulated them, to turn the Hubble disaster into an eventual success and to
achieve several other noted space triumphs.
Later, first as an academic then as a consultant, he refined his ideas and returned
to NASA, and sometimes to its contractors, to help strengthen team work and
improve the way groups collaborate with each other. This book then, is the result
both of his experience and the detailed development and testing of his theories at
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the leading edge of technology.

In other words, the book is based on working with technical and management
teams at a high level. Or, as he puts it: "This book is not teambuilding for
dummies. It describes teambuilding for smart, logical people."
Ah. Engineers.
Hubble Trouble
The story of the Hubble Space Telescope the disastrous mirror flaw that led to
its operational failure and the subsequent "rescue" mission that rectified the error
is central to the development of the 4-D teambuilding approach outlined below.
It surfaces in many chapters of the book, offering evidence and anecdotal support
for Pellerin's assertion that social context underlies poor team performance.
In a nutshell, Hubble launched in 1990 with a mirror that had been ground
incorrectly because of a simple human error, rendering it virtually useless. Three
years later, the fault was corrected and the project salvaged in a daring mission
instigated by Pellerin. Although the author had not been involved in Hubble at the
outset, he was at the helm for the actual launch and he was holding the baby
when the subsequent inquiry pointed an accusatory finger at the project's
"leadership" (among other things).
It's true, he says, that there had been clues about the mirror problem during
testing, long before it left the ground. Yet these were never picked up. Why not?
Because the project's tight schedule and budgetary pressure had strained
relationships between NASA and its contractor to the point of downright hostility,
ultimately resulting in poor communication, and thus failure, to identify the flaw. In
other words, the context of the relationship affected the way people behaved.
"The point is," says Pellerin, "that unnoticed social shortfalls destroyed this high
visibility, tightly managed program. This is unfortunately a common problem for
teams of technical people. Social shortfalls are the root cause of disasters ranging
from Challenger's explosion and Columbia's disintegration to airplane crashes."
Up to 95% of all project failures, according to one NASA expert, are due to human
error or miscommunication rather than technical errors.
The 4-D System
Pellerin eventually left NASA, showered with awards and accolades, to become
Professor of Leadership in the business school at the University of Colorado at
Boulder but he had taken some of the Hubble baggage with him, pondering the
issue of interpersonal and team relationships, and trying to map a simple, logical
structure that explained behaviors and identified why some teams succeeded and
others didn't.

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He hit on the idea of using an X-Y coordinate model (with two intersecting axes
creating four quadrants) after reading a comic strip about the quintessential
technical geek Dilbert, which declared "Every consultant makes a living with a
two-by-two matrix." Eureka!
In Pellerin's model, the vertical axis represents the way in which an individual
draws on information to guide their behavior. At the top of the axis is the intuitor
(the degree to which the individual acts through intuition), while at the bottom, is
the sensor (the degree to which information is gathered using the five senses).
The intersecting horizontal axis represents a continuum between emotion (lefthand side) and logic (right hand) used in decision-making.
Into each of the four resulting sectors, Pellerin inserts and labels a dimension of
leadership that reflects the two elements of the bordering axes:

Top-left, combining intuition and emotion, is the cultivating sector.

Individuals here focus on feelings and intuition, caring for and appreciating
others, and supporting them in being happy and successful. Their key
results objective is to achieve success without damaging people. Pellerin
introduces a color system for his sectors; cultivating is green. Example:
Mahatma Gandhi.

Bottom left combines emotional deciding with sensory informationgathering. Here you find people who are including, that is to say, team
builders who focus on relationships, all pulling together. They're facilitators
and collaborators, with a goal of success through harmony, and are given
the color yellow. Example: Dwight D Eisenhower.

Top-right, combining intuitive information-sourcing with logical decisionmaking, is the visioning sector, occupied by smart, creative people
blue-sky thinkers. Hence, this sector is blue (which happens to be the
home base for the author). They strive to be the best and usually think
their own ideas are the best.Success is measured by excellence and
innovation. Example: Howard Hughes.

Bottom right is home to those whose decisions are predicated on logic and
whose information comes from their fact-finding senses. These are
directing people, managers, and are given the color orange. They are
process-driven planners, applying discipline and rigor. Success to them
comes through processes and consistency. Example: Movie director
Michael Winner, who famously said: "A team effort is a lot of people doing
what I say.

Visually, the four dimensions, or culture foundations, are represented as follows:

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A couple of vital things to note here. First, most engineers and scientists are blue,
while many businesses, bosses, government organizations and politicians are
orange. Second, all of us are predominantly at home in one sector or another, but
a successful leader and a successful team must understand and be able to
employ all four dimensions hence 4-D (more on this later) and know how to
deal with other individuals and teams of a different color.
Those in different sectors, for instance, may find themselves in conflict with each
other, so the worst that can happen a situation that has doomed many projects
occurs when a one dimensional team leader (1-D) in one sector comes up
against a team leader, or even a key customer, from another sector. In these
cases, it may be actually necessary to change your team leadership to one that
matches the hue of the other leader.
For example, a client sought Pellerin's help with a major proposal they were
pitching for a nuclear space propulsion system and he quickly identified that the
team leader was highly blue very creative and inventive, truly visionary. But
NASA was in a hurry and required decisive, orange, directing leadership to
expedite delivery. Pellerin's advice to his client was to substitute an orange leader
onto the team. The client did and won the contract.
If your team's culture foundation doesn't match that of your customers, he warns,
competitors that do will take business away from you. In fact, the author suggests,
early-phase project teams should be mostly blue but shift to mostly oranges
during implementation, with a sprinkling of greens and yellows to provide
collaboration skills and deep values.
What's Your Color?
The best stepping-off point into the four dimensional world is knowing where you
"live," which sector best matches your personality. You may already intuitively
know this (especially if you're intuitive!) but two quick tests to discover if you're
an emotional or logical decider, and an information intuitor or a sensor provide
a 90% reliable indicator.
An emotional decider values harmonious relationships, acts on what feels right,
trusts her heart, considers people first, prefers to decide through consensus and
dislikes conflict. A logical decider, on the other hand, thinks of the task first (before
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the people issues), makes his own decisions and likes to be right. Conflict is not a
problem. Which are you?
On the information axis, the intuitor feels he instinctively knows what's right. He's
a creative thinker, accustomed to flashes of inspiration, is happy to work with
concepts and big ideas and likes to think of future possibilities. By implication, he
may not be very good at actually making a decision. By contrast, the sensor sticks
to the observable facts, is more comfortable with detail than big ideas. She's
analytical in approach and grounded in common sense and reality. Which are
you?
Put your two findings together and you will know which quadrant you belong in.
You'll know your color.
You can apply the same approach to your whole team (and other teams with
which you might be interacting) to establish its predominant color and that of the
leader. And once you know these things, in order to identify where you need to
improve, you must establish where you (and the team) stand in your expertise in
the other sectors, using 4-D Systems' proprietary Individual and Team
Assessments. To undergo these, you can do two additional things: examine the
underlying characteristics and behaviors of each sector, then go online and take
the 15 minute 4-D assessments, the basic ones of which are free (though you
have to register), at www.4-DSystems.com.
Beneath the Hood of the Four Dimensions
Pellerin subdivides each of the four dimensions into two characteristic "behaviors"
(making 8 behaviors in total).
Among cultivators, the defining behaviors are the abilities to: 1) express
sincere/authentic appreciation of others' contributions, and 2) to identify and
address common/shared interests (i.e., what is something we both or all might
want?).
Includers go out of their way to: 3) recognize, delegate power and share
information with others, and 4) build trust with others by always delivering upon
what they have agreed.
The blue visionaries are: 5) optimists (but reality-based that is, they see the
genuine potential and shoot for it believing it can be achieved) and 6) 100%,
"whatever it takes" committed to success.
Finally, the behaviors that characterize the best of the directing sector are: 7)
acceptance of responsibility and avoidance of blaming and complaining, and 8)
ensuring clarity of roles, accountability and authority.
Now, through his website and consultancy, the author gives individuals and teams
the opportunity to score themselves and each other on these 8 behaviors, simply
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by selecting one of five measures of whether the individuals and teams are:
never, seldom, sometimes, usually or always able to meet the standards.
You are then benchmarked against the results of hundreds of others who have
completed the same test, and placed in a relative performance quintile: bottom,
below average, average, above average or top. Your quintile position is shown
both for each of the behaviors and overall.
It's easy to see where this is taking us. Once you know your quintile positions for
each behavior and, by implication, for each dimension, you know where you are
performing well and where you are not. You can then work to improve on your
performances and return to the assessments as often as you want in order to
measure progress.
And experience suggests you will do well. Historically, the vast majority of
participants in this 4-D assessment exercise will move up a quintile or more over a
relatively short time (except, of course, those who are already at the top). What is
more, his experience with NASA suggests that the very fact that 4-D systems are
in place has an elevating effect on performance. Many of the things you can do to
affect change will be obvious, but, in the final section of the book, Pellerin does
offer useful guidance.
Context Shifting and Story-lines
The first tool is the context shifting worksheet (CSW), a simple questionnaire
that can be downloaded as a PDF, again for free, from the author's website. It
challenges you to think about your project or team goals by reviewing your current
situation, expressing the outcome you want and identifying any issues relating to
the eight behaviors. This will enable you to reframe your approach and adapt
team behaviors.
A key element of this process is to know and understand the story-lines that are in
play. Simply put, story-lines are the things we say and hold to be true about a
situation. They may or may not be true for others, who have a different perception
of the same issue. Thus, it is easy to see how two teams or groups come into
conflict. Pellerin encourages us to recognize negative story-lines and, where
relevant, to test them with the other group and reframe them positively. Although
it's a little confusing, because of his earlier usage of color labels, he calls positive
story-lines "green" and negative ones "red."
To illustrate their usage, he recalls a meeting between a NASA team and a
contractor's group who were at odds with each other. He invited the latter to say
what they thought about the relationship (their story-line), which turned out to be a
belief that NASA did not want the company to make a fair profit on a project
because NASA preferred to use any surplus to fund project overruns.
"This is a red story-line as it sets up an adversarial relationship," the author
explains. So the NASA team shifts it to a green story-line by saying this simply is
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not true, that they understand the need for a fair profit, which the contractor will
get if they do their job well. You can see how conflict would arise if the red storyline had not been aired and corrected.
Similarly, Pellerin argues, when you find another person running red story-lines
that would cause performance-limiting behaviors, you might ask: "If we ran the
story-line you just stated, what behavior would result and where would that
behavior take us?" This is exactly what happened when a colleague in the 4-D
Systems consultancy challenged the author's book project because "nobody
reads anymore." Pellerin replied: "If I buy into that story-line, I would stop, and
then how would we take the benefits of the 4-D system into the world?"
In other words, steer clear of red story-lines. The startling fact is, he concludes,
that 95% of the story-lines we apply to others, or that others apply to us, are
simply wrong.
Tackling the Eight Behaviors
When your Individual and Team Assessments reveal a performance shortfall in
any of the eight behaviors outlined above, you need to take corrective action.
Sometimes, thoughtful reflection of your own personal experience of being on the
receiving end of poor behavior can provide a starting point for understanding and
tackling your weaknesses. And there is often a simple solution that can make a
significant difference to your compliance with each of the behavior standards.
Expressing authentic appreciation: We all need to feel appreciated. Recall a
situation in which you felt your efforts were unacknowledged, then one in which
you felt you truly were appreciated. Feel the difference? The basis of appreciation
is gratitude, so spend time thinking about the things in life you're grateful for. In a
group situation, "exercise appreciation muscles" by inviting each person to stand
up and say what they are grateful for about being in the team. This can shift a
team's social context to one of mutual respect, and improve performance.
Addressing shared interests: "We are most comfortable with people who want
for us, the things we want for ourselves," says Pellerin. Exploit this, when trying to
make progress in a project or a relationship. Identify what it is the other party
wants that you also want for them. When you interact (in a general discussion or
negotiation) let them know how you can help them achieve this desired outcome.
Appropriately including others: There's nothing worse than feeling left out
perhaps of an important meeting to which you should have been invited, or an
award or recognition to which you contributed. Give careful thought to who should
be included in the situations that you control and make the time to listen to others'
points of view (their perception of this gives them a sense of inclusion). And when
you are included in such situations, make a point of letting the includer know you
appreciate it.
Keeping all your agreements: Doing what you said you would do is the
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foundation of trusting relationships. You want a reputation for delivering on

everything including turning up on time (not a minute late) for meetings. Even if
you break an agreement through no fault of your own, you still broke it, so 'fess up
"I broke my agreement with you" explain why and how you will avoid it in
future and then apologize. But don't start with the apology; it may come off as just
sounding trite or insincere.
Expressing reality-based optimism: Reality-based optimism put men in the air
using bicycle technology, and landed men on the moon on schedule. It's about
letting people know that what might appear difficult or impossible can be done and
that you know the route for getting there. Pellerin offers a three-step process for
doing this to inspire others to action: First, state the truth of the current situation
(the state or stage of a project, how and why you got there). Second, having faced
reality, state your goals for what you wish to create or achieve (this may even
include personal benefits such as team members having more time with their
families). And third, state how you and the team are going to achieve this (for
example, using the Individual and Team Assessments to improve behavior and,
through this, performance).
Committing 100%: Committing 100% to a task or a relationship is "the most
magical notion in this book," says Pellerin. When you completely commit to
achieving something, perceptions shift and solutions appear. This will not happen
if you are at less than 100%. Make a truthful list of your commitments to
everything in life, so you know where your priorities lie. This will bring your
attention to what matters most.
Avoid blaming and complaining: We know it's wrong yet we still do it, but
blaming and complaining are counter-productive in the world of team
performance. They often spring from fear of being blamed ourselves, of they are
the outcome of mindsets like being a victim ("I can't do anything about it.") or even
a hero (for example, taking on more work than we can realistically cope with).
Instead of complaining, address the issue in a 4-D way expressing appreciation
and shared interests with the other party, ensuring you keep your agreements,
using optimism for creating an appealing future, then asking for what you
want/need to get it done. If you are a blamer, acknowledge that you are likely
angry with yourself for your role in creating the difficulty.
Clarifying roles, accountability and authority (RAAs): "Roles," explains the
author, "are the functions of a person in their work context. Accountability is the
result individuals must deliver. Authority is the power granted to individuals,
generally through delegation." Do you and your team members each have a clear,
shared picture of your RAAs? If not, have each person write down their own
(including their ownership personal responsibility for individual processes
within a project or the business overall), which should then be approved (or,
presumably negotiated) with their supervisors. Then, guide them to continuous
refinement and improvement over time.
Conclusion

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Because engineers and other technical people are so focused on the hard,
challenging dimensions of their projects, they traditionally don't have time or
regard for the theory and practice of what they see as the soft skills of team
development.
Yet, the experience at NASA and in other engineering-related sectors,
demonstrates that teams can become internally or interactively (with other teams)
dysfunctional. Often this arises because of misalignment of behavioral skills.
Charlie Pellerin's 4-D solution, which he still teaches as a consultant to NASA,
categorizes individuals and teams according to how they make decisions (using
emotions or logic) and acquire information (intuitively or via their five senses). This
enables him to identify four innate personality types among leaders and teams
cultivating/caring, including/collaborating, visionary/creative and
directing/planning.
Successful leaders and teams need to be able to harness the underlying
behaviors in all of these character types and they can do this through Individual
and Team Assessments, repeated over time as they modify their behaviors.
The author reflects: "It is my earnest belief that, in the final analysis, the Hubble
mirror flaw was a good thing for me. I doubt that I would have been motivated to
develop the 4-D System in any other way. If the 4-D System prevents future
space accidents, particularly those that take lives, the flaw was a net good for us
all."

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