Excellence: Room for Mistakes
On November 7th, 1962, NASA awarded a contract to Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation to design and build the lunar landing vehicle for the Apollo missions. Over the next 7 years, Grumman’s team of talented engineers set about the mammoth task of inventing a product that would do something that nobody had ever done before. It was true, pioneering innovation, and Grumman completed their remit to NASA, playing a major part in the extraordinary feat of landing men on the moon.
During one phase of the project, the Grumman team was testing the landing gear design on a full sized and fully weighted prototype. For several, consecutive tests, the leg was snapping at a particular hinged joint, and they couldn’t figure out why. One night, after pouring over his designs and calculations for hours, one of their best engineers discovered his error. That error, incidentally, had been made months prior, and all calculations had been based off of that erroneous data since.
He went to Grumman’s Program Manager for the Lunar Module, Tom Kelly, and confessed his mistake. Tom immediately realized the seriousness of the mistake. Fixing the mistake would put the program months behind schedule and cost millions of dollars. It would be understandable, perhaps even expected, for that engineer who made an honest mistake to be fired because of the impact to timeline and budget.
But that’s not what Tom Kelly did.
Tom Kelly sent that engineer home. He told him to take a few days off, rest and relax and spend some time with his wife and kids, then come back to work the following week and assist in fixing the mistake. It was Tom Kelly’s belief that as long as the team at Grumman were open and honest about their mistakes, and worked together to fix them if and when they happened, they had a shot at being successful in building a spaceship to land on the moon.
That belief turned out to be a good one. The first Lunar Excursion Module flew in space on January 22nd, 1968, just 5 years and 3 months after Grumman were asked to build it. 12 more Lunar Modules flew in space, one of which famously became a life boat for the crew of the stricken Apollo 13 crew. The Lunar Module was an excellent spaceship; the result of a commitment to excellence.
The reason I tell you this story is to illustrate that a commitment to excellence and a steadfast belief that ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for mistakes. The human factor tells us that mistakes can and will happen. They are inevitable. It’s not ‘if’, it’s ‘when’. A commitment to excellence doesn’t determine a ‘no mistakes’ policy, but it does determine how you react and deal with mistakes when the happen.
Had Tom Kelly fired his engineer, I don’t think anyone would have argued. Certainly, it would have been a loss of engineering talent, and a replacement would have to have been found, requiring Grumman to pour additional man hours in to bringing that replacement up to speed and integrating him in to the project. But when the initial mistake cost huge amounts of time and money, Tom would not have been chastised for that decision. People get fired for less every day.
Yet the culture of excellence that Tom had instilled and pursued in his workforce and with his workforce meant that everyone understood that it’s better to own up to the mistake rather than try and cover it up or, worse, try and shift the blame. When the tired, overworked engineer discovered his mistake, he owned up to it. Their collective commitment to excellence determined that the problem would be fixed, the lesson would be learned, and the same mistake wouldn’t be made again.
In project management, one of the most valuable processes a team can go through is the Lessons Learned cycle. This is where some introspective questions are asked and acted upon. What went well? What didn’t go well? What did we do right? What mistakes did we make? What should we keep on doing? What should we stop doing? By striving after excellence in asking these questions regularly, the leader will begin to influence a cultural shift towards excellence that doesn’t forbid mistakes, but instead determines how to deal with them and learn from them.
In Grumman’s case, the lessons they learned during the lifecycle of the Lunar Excursion Module played a massive part in them delivering on their promises to NASA. Mistakes happen. They are not forbidden. They should be expected. Mistakes are okay. Address them, fix them, and learn from them. It’s in that cycle that levels of excellence get higher and higher.
I maintain that ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough, but remember that excellence is a journey towards success. Mistakes are always an inevitability, but failure, as NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz once said, “is not an option”.
