4-D Network Provider Communication – Assessment Dashboard Simplification

I wrote in a recent blog about how societies (and organizations) tend to increase complexity when they have excess energy. Our small company, “4-D Systems,” is unfortunately no exception. I watch vigilantly for complexity-creep and remove this cancer as I find it. I now admit that an important complexity increase in our Assessment Dashboard slipped past me completely.

We provide Assessment Dashboards to 4-D Network Providers so they can manage their Team and Individual Development Assessments. The dashboards use a hierarchy to organize team assessments. Here is an overview of the initial setup.

-         Your first entry is your “Client” – the entity that you ultimately bill for your services.

-         Your next is a client’s “Organization” – there are several choices available to you.

o       If you are assessing a project, enter the project name.

o       If you are assessing a line (e.g. “functional”) organization, you can enter either the name of the team you are working with, e.g. the Software Development Branch, or the higher-level organization, e.g. the Engineering Division.

o       Suppose you put the branch name in the example above as both the organization and team and changed your mind later. This is not a problem. You can edit the organization name and insert additional teams as you choose.

Now, I return to the topic that introduced this blog. The complexity that I belatedly discovered we then removed was the “Team Roll-up.” This device made the Dashboard complex and vexing, both for software coders and users. For years, I believed the intended purpose was rapid generation of summary assessment reports for team leaders. I recently learned that its only purpose was the preparation of participant summaries that our Client Program Managers (CPMs) rarely, if ever, used. It will vanish from our Assessment Dashboards within a few weeks. With this removed, everything is easier.

-         Now, the third step to set up your dashboard is simply entering the names of the teams you want to asses, then managing the assessment process.

o       If you are assessing a project with a single team enter the same name for the team that you entered above for “organization.”

o       If you are assessing a project with a multiple teams enter each of the team’s names.

o       If you are assessing an organization, set it up similarly.

o       What do you do if your client’s situation changes? Constant reorganizations are common. This is no problem as everything is movable and editable.

If you are interested in becoming a 4-D Network Provider and having your own (free) Assessment Dashboard, go to NASAteambuilding.com and join us.

Warmest regards,

Charlie Pellerin, author of How NASA Builds Teams (Wiley, 2009)

Is NASA Team Benchmarking Valid for Commercial Teams?

This is an important inquiry. Our 15-minute, on-line, Team Development Assessments (TDAs) benchmark team’s performance against a database of 300 (mostly)  NASA first team assessments.

First, why do we only use 300 teams when we have more than twice that many in our database? We stopped updating the benchmarking database when we discovered that we were increasing the performance of teams we had not previously worked with.  We have quantitative evidence of something every leader talks about but seldom achieves – systemic culture change. See How NASA Builds Teams (Wiley, 2009) page 49.

When recent commercial teams benchmarked in the bottom quintile, their first reaction was to rationalize the result with the Red Story-line, “NASA teams are better.”  I had personally managed Team Developed Assessments (TDAs) for the last 15 years and did not believe that this was the case. When I heard this again a few weeks ago, we decided to perform an analysis.

4-D Systems analysts Skip Borst and Rita Goodson used the following processes. They began by organizing the 126 commercial team first assessments into a histogram. These teams came from many industries, including a bakery, a French nuclear plant and a financial services firm. Skip and Rita then calculated the location (in percent) of the four boundaries between the five quintiles. This methodology wrings the maximum amount of information from the data.

Next, they compared the location of these four boundaries with those in the 300 NASA team benchmark. The boundaries all aligned within one percent! The 300 team database is a good and fair benchmark for commercial teams.

Warm regards,

Charlie Pellerin

Societal Complexity and Collapse

I only occasionally encounter a very new way of looking at something that interests me. As any who read my blog regularly know, I am interested in macroeconomics. I study this as an investor, and to learn what I can l about the future of our society. More specifically, I am trying to motivate you to take some simple steps to help you and your families manage the inevitable transition as the end of cheap oil arrives.

I consider this work as an extension of the humanism in my book How NASA Builds Teams and my work with technical teams.

If you have never thought about the human labor equivalent of gasoline, imagine this thought experiment from Chris Martenson. Put a gallon of gasoline in your car and driving it until it stops. Then, hire someone for $12 per hour to restore it to the starting point. If we assume they can push the car at one mile-per-hour, you would pay them $3600 for a gallon of gas that you bought for say, $3.60!

Now, perform the calculation for a full tank of gas say, 30 gallons. You have the human labor equivalent of twice the US median family income in your car!

Many people confuse the end of oil with the end of oil we can afford to burn. 100 years ago, we required the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil to acquire 100 barrels.  Recently, depending on the source we need 20 barrels of oil to acquire 100 barrels. Oil is becoming ever scarcer and the quality is steadily diminishing. One day, we will need one barrel to acquire one barrel and we will stop using oil. If you do not believe that peak cheap oil is here, I recommend that you listen to the Financial Sense podcasts. Moreover, Erik Townsend had an excellent video.  Nothing I have said so far is news to readers of my blog.

The new finding is the role of excess energy in enhancing the complexity of societies. Repeatedly, societies gradually use up the energy and “collapse.” The term “collapse” in this context does not mean what you might think. “Collapse” means rapid simplification. Rapid simplification will result in a dramatic reduction in our standard of living. Note that the U.S., as the greatest per capita user of cheap oil,  will inevitably experience a more significant lowering of standard of living. Moreover, the current huge overlay of debt limits our capital to take mitigating steps.

My first exposure to this idea was in a podcast with an Italian systems management expert, Ugo Bardi in a February 18, Financial Sense podcast. 

The podcast mentioned Dr. Joseph Tainter. I Googled his name and found a YouTube video by Dr. Tainter. I recommend that you watch it! He explains this phenomenon more eloquently than I can.

Reflect on our society’s response to 9/11. How much more complex has boarding an aircraft become? How much more complex has the screening equipment become? How many new Federal agencies and employees are we now sustaining? What are the costs of all these new complexities and how will we pay them?

With great regard,

Charlie Pellerin

Powerconnect and the Optical Society Presentations

I had two especially well received presentations (Download the Presentations in PowerPoint) during the past several days. The first was at a Powerconnect meeting in the Cisco facility in Palo Alto to Indian IT experts working in the US who graduated from the National Institutes of Technology.

The second was in Boulder, Colorado to the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Optics Society of America.

You will understand my presentation most easily if you have visited my web site at www.NASAteambuilding.com or read my book, How NASA Builds Teams (Wiley, 2009)

I believe that these talks were especially well received (on the advice of JJ)  because I began with very real emotional content. I described my experience of 25 years ago when I pulled into the NASA Headquarters to be met by a member of my staff who informed me that Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded, killing the entire crew. I wrenched with anxiety as I wondered whether my “low-cost Spartan payload” could have caused the accident. Of course, it did not.

I watched the testimony of the NASA managers who approved the launch, as I knew many of them well. I could not understand how they could have approved going ahead with a vehicle with ice all over it. Moreover, my hero, Richard Feynman’s demonstration of dipping an O-ring in his ice water and showing it stiffen, mesmerized me. My technically oriented mindset completely missed the point of the Rogers’ Commission report that the root cause was sociological. I would pay dearly for this oversight when I launched Hubble with a flawed mirror—with exactly the same root cause!

Please look at the slides and tell me what you think

Charlie Pellerin

Why I Sold All My Stocks

Stocks (and fiat currencies) are “tertiary” forms of wealth with no value without primary and secondary wealth. Primary wealth is economically harvestable basic resources. Secondary wealth is product made from primary wealth, taken to markets and then sold.

More importantly, stocks have current value because of revenues they will generate with future growth. What are the prospects for future growth in the largest economy in the world?

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest Budget and Economic Outlook last week.  According to CBO, the fiscal condition of the United States has deteriorated since its last report issued in August.  Highlights of the new ten-year budget “baseline” include projections of:

• A slower economic recovery;
• An unprecedented deficit of $1.5 trillion for this fiscal year (FY), which, at 9.8 percent of the economy or gross domestic product (GDP), is only slightly below the post-World War II record of 10 percent recorded in FY 2009;
• Compared to August, an increase in cumulative deficits over the 2011-2020 period of more than $1.4 trillion, assuming current laws are maintained. When likely changes to current law (extension of the tax cuts, maintenance of Medicare’s physician payment rates, and a phase-out of war spending) are assumed, cumulative deficits are projected to be more than $3 trillion higher;
• Permanent cash flow deficits for Social Security;
• A doubling of spending for health care programs over the decade; and
• Interest costs that will equal non-defense discretionary spending in 2019.

Other highlights:

• CBO expects unemployment to remain very high despite projected economic growth in 2011 driven by the tax cuts passed at the end of 2010.
• CBO projects that federal health spending will continue to be one of the fastest-growing areas of federal spending, increasing at an average rate of 7 percent per year over the next decade. In contrast, over that same time, GDP is expected to grow at the rate of only 2.4 percent per year.
• Medicaid’s growth is projected to be responsible for 40 percent of the growth of federal health spending over the next decade.
• Medicare, which has historically grown faster than Medicaid, is projected in the baseline to be responsible for 30 percent of the growth of federal health spending.

You get the idea! (Data from the Peterson Foundation)

(Actually, I kept one stock, Silver Wheaton)

Charlie Pellerin, author of How NASA Builds Teams

A Special Team Development Opportunity (No Kidding!)

Are you a member of, or working with a team that would like to experience the full 4-D Team Development Assessment (TDA) process? As a special promotion, we are providing select teams the following for free.

• A full Team Development Assessment (TDA) including preparation and set up by a 4-D Master Certified Coach
• The TDA Report briefing to the team leader by the same Coach
• Support to the team leader by the same Coach when they brief the team, if they want this support.
• A 50-50 share in the cost of a copy of How NASA Builds Teams for each team member  Tell us when you order books (we recommend Amazon, $25) for half of your team members, and we will ship you the same number directly from Wiley free. Each participant needs a reference copy of How NASA Builds Teams to benefit fully from this and future assessments.

(The retail value of this offering is ~$2000.)

To request this, send an e-mail to Charlie@4-DSystems.com describing:

• The name of the team and what they do
• Who you are and your relationship to the team
• Whether the team leader is willing to do his or her part, which is

1. To participate in the set up and launch of the TDA
2. To receive the TDA report briefing
3. Brief the results to their team. and
4. Model the assessed behaviors.

• Please include any special reasons that this team should receive this extraordinary gift.
• Note: We will only communicate directly with you and only on this matter. No one else will receive any other communications from us.

With warm regards, Charlie Pellerin, author of How NASA Builds Teams

4-D Network Member Communication 2'9'2011

Big News on Multiple Fronts

Out third “Learning Tool” is now operational! We urge all Network Members to use these. Access the tools from  the “Learning and Resources” tab at www.NASAteambuilding.com.

Overview:

We now have 4-D Network Members using Team Development Assessments (TDAs) in English (many countries), Chinese (Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Mainland), Japanese, Korean, and French (Canada and France) with Vietnamese, German, Turkish, Russian, and Norwegian up soon. (Marilyn Atkinson is doing the latter four tranlsations, thank you.)

Charlie this Sunday in Palo Alto

I will present at a “Powerconnect” event at Cisco Systems this Sunday noon to four in the Cisco  week  that JJ stimulated. The event is open to the public. My contact is NIT Brand Ambassador Sridhar Muppala at sridhar89@hotmail.com.

Charlie at the University of Colorado Thursday, Feb. 17

I am speaking to the Rocky Mountain Section of the Optical Society of America (RMOSA) at 7:30 PM. The meeting is in Koelbel Building, Leeds Business School at Q20 on the CU campus map. It is open to the public as far as I know. My contact is Alex Hartwit (aharwit@ball.com), son of the world-renowned scientist, Martin Harwit.

Charlie in Japan last week of April:

Global Coaching Conference, date: 4/25/2011, time: 15:00-18:00

15:00~16:30 Ed Modell -ICF Chairman　Organizational Activation and Employee Development by using coaching

16:30-17:15　Dr. Charlie Pellerin-How NASA build teams

17:15-18:00　Ms. Tachibana Fukushima Sakie-Korn/ferry

Coaching Social Forum 19:00-21:00

Upcoming Publications:

Space News has accepted my Op-ed “Learning from Challenger and Hubble” and will publish it soon.

Susan at IEEE:

4-D Coach Susan Shapiro sent this: Charlie and Skip, I have been asked to speak at an IEEE engineering manager’s meeting in February in Dallas. The group will be mainly technical managers and some individual contributors in the technology field. 4-D is my platform and I will pull the best slides together from your materials. I hope to get some interested parties who want to learn more about 4-D as a result.

HNBT (English):

My editor, Richard Narramore told me today that we have broken through 10,000 hard copy sales. He is willing to consider publishing a second edition, soon! My agent, Doris Michaels will make the arrangements.

Recent Presentations by Charlie:

Hugh recently arranged for me to spend an enjoyable afternoon with a group of “hi-pots” at L 3 Communications in Greenville, Texas.

I gave a talk at the Training 2011 conference in San Diego yesterday. Go to our website and click on the Blog to view the slides. (If you are at the Blog, just scroll down to “The Leanest and Most Effective Team and Leader Development Processes in Existence.”)

India:

JJ reported that stocks for ‘How NASA Builds Team’ are now in India. Times Book Group is spreading the book through their network in all major cities. This is a special low-cost version that Wiley permitted.

HNBT Indian reprint available on Flipkart.com, most popular online store in India. http://www.flipkart.com/nasa-builds-teams-pellerin-charles-book-8126529539

Vietnam:

Thanks Charlie, I am implementing your ideas with my team first (eating my own dog food so to speak).  If I can crack the code with my team my plan is to introduce it to my clients.  My main business here is executive search and selection of Vietnamese manager and professionals into middle/senior roles with our clients who are 70% foreign companies. It would be great to meet you.  If you are ever in the region (Singapore, KL etc.) let me know, Regards Tom Voyers, General Director, HR2B / Talent Recruitment JSC tom.vovers@hr2b.com or 1@hr2b.com

Japan:

Achievement Publishing is moving rapidly forward in Japan! I recently received this e-mail from Achievement’s President (and my good friend, Aoki-san)

Dear Mr. Pellerin, I am truly glad to get to know this 4-D system. I promise you to bring great success on this project, including the process of Japanese translation, I think now we are ready to selling. From this point, we will do marketing to big companies and government. We changed the direction for this project. Now, Eiro Sato who is the director of Achievement, Corp. (Charlie note: and a Master Certified Coach) is in charge of this project. We believe that this project should be our high priority and something that we need to invest in.

I arranged for my assistant, Tsukasa Dakeshita who graduated from Azusa Pacific University and has a master on HROD, to be his assistant to carry on this project. (Charlie note: She has an undergrad and advanced degree from a university in California. We have been working with Tsukasa, and she is wonderful!) Our company has 100 employees and we have great members from sales department. I am looking forward meeting you in the spring.

Blessings, Satoshi Aoki, President of Achievement Corp.

Arlington County, Virginia (USA):

Wow! What exciting events and schedule!!! My colleagues, Angela Churchill and Susan Barrett have had an amazing first round of 4 D inside our local County Government (Arlington VA) Office of Human Services. The “word on the street” is TRANSFORMATIVE , even in the early stages. We are introducing the concepts to the Economic Development Team next week. Rock on, Sandy Brody

Texas Instruments:

Charlie, I feel like a kid right now. Attached are the results of the TI (ABC) team’s second TDA and they went from 63 to 76!!!!! This is better than expected as I have only gone over the Appreciation and Shared Interests sections with them. But the team is experiencing a surge of good will and excitement about bettering themselves. I have been pressing them on specific Action Items and they have taken the bit in their mouth and run with it. Its all good and should lead to our goal of making 4-D a institutionalized process for Texas Instruments teams. The next step is to put an analysis together for the TI Leadership Team and HR. I will keep you appraised as we progressed. This is what I need to show L3 and Raytheon; real progress and numbers to support the 4-D process in commercial high tech industries. Thanks so very much, Hugh Wilson.

China and Korea

Hi Charlie and Anne, Thank you so much for sharing wonderful ideas! Now my 4d teams and coaches are doing many marketing stuff in China now. My staff with Amy is helping NASA book publishing process and national promotional event together with Chinese publisher now. I am introducing this book to major MBA and government leaders in china. I did some 4D AD for National Training Magazine in China too

In Korea, I teach 4D at PM Korea leaders at Seoul National University (#1 university in Korea) few times. In Asia, it will take a lot of time to go to government and top leadership. Please let me know future 4 D-workshop events, I like to join too Now I am having family vocation in Orlando, FL

With grateful heart,

Paul Jeong

Wiley Training Sales:

(This was in an old e-mail that I came across)

“Charlie, I want to tell you that I just received a big promotion. After I participated in your workshop as an observer, I applied what I learned at the office, especially in how we worked with other companies. Everyone noticed the change, most especially my boss. When people asked me about my new behaviors, I handed them a copy of your book saying, read this—it actually works.”

—Jeff Parker, Senior Sales Representative, John Wiley and Sons

France:

Five plant managers and other senior officials from EDF arrive in California this weekend to begin a tour of four NASA centers to discuss common interests and 4-D Teambuilding. Christian and Anne are accompanying them. Our excellent CPMs arranged events at JPL, Glenn, JSC and Goddard.

New Events for Charlie (and Anne) in South America:

-          Speech at Coaches Conference in Sao Paulo – June 28 – Contact Maria Angelica maria.angelica@ecosocial.com.br

-          PMI Workshop in Rio – June 29 and PMI Keynote address – July 1 My contact is Edivaldo Zava  e.zava@optionbrasil.com.br for all Rio PMI activities

-          Uruguay workshop – TBD date (see below) contact Roberto Tento rtalentolane@gmail.com for information

Hi Charlie, I’ve started my contacts with companies here in Uruguay. In this instance I’m proposing these companies to give an sponsorship to the event. I would like to share my thoughts (and numbers!) with you. I would like to propose a “sponsorship package” that includes:

-          At least 10 seats at the 1 Day Workshop

-          2 participants at a “VIP” session with you. This session could be in the form of a dinner or a 2 hours meeting.

-          Some kind of Publicity. For example you could be to allow the companies to advertise they are sponsoring the event and give them permission to take a photo with you, so they can use it as publicity with their customers.

The first reactions to my contact have been positive. It is likely that in the next couple of weeks I will have meetings with them to go into the details. I would like to have your OK before proceeding to negotiations.

Last but not least, let me introduce Guillermo Talento to you. Guillermo, to whom I am copying this mail, will be organizing the event with me.

Warm regards,

Roberto Talento – If you are in Uruguay, contact Roberto at rtalentolane@gmail.com

South Africa:

Bruce Rodrigues (Human Systems International) has “come alive” and is using the Learning Tools. Great to see you engaging, Bruce!

With deepest respect, Charlie Pellerin author of How NASA Builds Teams

The Leanest and Most Effective Team and Individual Development Processes in Existence

The Leanest and Most Effective Team and Individual Development Processes in Existence is a presentation I gave at the Training 2011 Conference yesterday – the slide notes should help you understand the slides. I selected the title because the claim, to the best of my knowledge, is true.

Charlie Pellerin

Author of How NASA Builds Teams

I've Read Some Shocking Things, But…

I routinely read Chris Martenson’s daily blogs, and this tops anything i have seen yet. This is so outrageous that only months ago, I would have trashed it. As a physicist, I am trained to examine evidence as it matches with observed fact. I am growing ever more convinced that what she says is reality. Look at your peril at this Catherine Austin Fitts link.

Eliminating Future Challenger Explosions

Yesterday was the 25^th anniversary of the tragic explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger. As NASA’s Director, Astrophysics I was, of course, shocked to hear about the Challenger accident. I had a “Spartan-Halley” payload on Challenger and for a time worried whether my low-cost satellite could have somehow caused the accident. Of course, the small satellite had nothing to with the explosion. I followed the failure investigation very closely watching the testimony of my colleagues on television, and then studying the Rogers Commission report. The human mind is interesting. The central finding that the root cause was “social” rather than technical did not register at that time. I soon paid heavily for this oversight.

In 1990, I was responsible for launching Hubble Space Telescope with a flawed mirror. After mounting the mission to repair Hubble, I began to study the causes of accidents and mishaps. To my chagrin, I discovered, long after the fact, that the same “flawed social contexts” that caused the Challenger accident caused the Hubble mirror flaw! In 1995, I left the University of Colorado’s business school and began experimenting within aerospace companies with tools to manage project risk by managing “team social context.”

The real breakthrough in accident prevention and team performance enhancement came in 2002 with an initiative by Dr. Ed Hoffman, NASA’s Director of the Academy for Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL). NASA formed the APPEL after the Challenger accident to reduce the risk of future flight failures. Dr. Hoffman decided to apply the full suite of “4-D” social context management tools to NASA project teams. As president of “4-D Systems,” we have since engaged 700+ NASA teams in performance enhancement and risk mitigation.

I named this piece with a very provocative title, “Eliminating Future Challenger Explosions.” Much of what I know about Challenger, beyond what I described above comes from Diane Vaughn’s book, “The Challenger Launch Decision,” which persuasively (at least for me) argues that the tragedy had sociological factors as root cause. She named, for example, the phenomenon, “normalization of deviance” as a root cause of the accident. I was Hubble’s Program Director for eight years before it launched with the flawed mirror and for two years after. Dr Hoffman and I are clear that the APPEL 4-D Team Development Assessment (TDA) would have benchmarked teams from both Challenger and Hubble in the bottom quintile. Moreover, these “team social contexts” created the distorted perceptions and toxic behaviors that caused both incidents. Finally, it is clear that if we had the APPEL 4-D processes then that we have today, with team leaders willing to use them, that we could have dramatically reduced the likelihood of these tragic events.

Future Challenger-like explosions are unlikely as the Space Shuttle program is ending. This blog is actually about enhancing performance and reducing risk in professional/technical teams of all sorts. We assert is that our “4-D” processes significantly reduce the probability of mishaps (and overruns) at costs that are minuscule in comparison with the salary costs of the teams that use them. I explain these processes in detail in my book, “How NASA Builds Teams” (Wiley, 2009) and on my website www.NASAteambuilding.com.