Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone

I love Gene Kranz.  And I'm not alone. 

I wrote about four lessons from Apollo 13 a few years back.  As I've spoken about Mr. Kranz, the message of his leadership has really resonated with people.

I'm in Chicago today, speaking at NAFCU's Management and Leadership Institute. Before I went up, I quickly scanned Gene Kranz's Wikipedia page to confirm the name of an award he won. 

And then my jaw dropped.

I learned something that I hadn't known about the man. We all know his heroics from Apollo 13. But I didn't know that he was involved with Apollo 1.

Apollo 1 led to a tragedy, as three American Astronauts perished in a horrendous fire. 

Can you imagine seeing your colleagues die before your eyes? And perhaps because of a mistake that your team made?

Gene Kranz responded quickly, and decisively.  He gathered the team together, and he addressed them with words that became known as the Kranz Dictum.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!' I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.

Wow. That is leadership. In the worst moments, he accepted responsibility and set the expectation that such a tragedy would never happen again.  

I would have to think that the Kranz Dictum set in motion accountability and ownership that led to the triumph of Apollo 13.

***

So, I love the folks at Patriot FCU. I spoke with them this week, and I shared the story of my lone marathon run. Here's the photo of my "finish."  There's a debate as to whether I'm scratching my nose or not. Well, it is a scratch.  I was there. I wouldn't lie.

Well, this was attached to an email from my friend Mike, from Patriot FCU.

Love these people!

Have a great weekend, everyone!