Crazy Might Work
Issue #24 | October 2024
John Mather, NASA’s Nobel Laureate said that 50% of project costs are socially determined. NASA’s Stephen Johnson took this even further saying, “Frequently we find that the failure effects and proximal cause are technical, but the root causes and contributing factors are social or psychological…80 to 95 percent of failures are ultimately due to human error or miscommunication.”
WHEN IS TRAINING INSANE?
Culture, or ‘social context’ as NASA call it, far outweighs individual skills or capabilities as a determinant of team and organisational success. When the social environment is not supportive, high performance becomes a virtual impossibility. NASA learned this at great cost through a string of failed missions and shuttle disasters, before acknowledging that what leaders really needed was the ability to shift social context in which team performance was taking place. Since then, the ‘4-D’ program developed by NASA’s Director of Astrophysics, Charlie Pellerin, has become a benchmark for leadership development, both in NASA and around the world. It has been voluntarily completed by over 1,500 NASA teams, and has contributed to NASA becoming the Best Place to Work in US government for the twelfth year in a row (as at May, 2024). Here’s how they did it. READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
PODCAST: Fireside Chat: Charlie Pellerin and Paul Hawkins
Charlie Pellerin (Former Director of Astrophysics, NASA) and Paul Hawkins (Chief Combobulator, Crazy Might Work) discuss the origins of the NASA Four-Dimensional Leadership Program and why it has been so transformational globally since launching in the late 1990’s. Paul and Charlie discuss the revamped program which now incorporates simulations and updates from the current space program. Listen on your preferred podcast platform here:
“Having studied Leadership for many years, the NASA 4-D Leadership Program was an amazing life changing journey, helping me to build better teams and navigate the most hostile environments I could imagine. The program brought together a group of intelligent professionals and challenged them to see the world differently. The logical pathway from building people to developing them into a team and designing strong systems to create the ideas to drive progress makes sense and I have been applying it to my everyday life. I can’t highly recommend this excellent program enough. Now I just need my own rocket!”
– Former Commander, Raptor Squad (Australian Organised Crime Unit)
ONLINE PUBLIC NASA 4-DIMENSIONAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAMS
31 October 2024 – 19 December 2024
Join us on Thursday, 31 October 2024 for the next online public NASA 4-Dimensional Leadership Program which runs once a week for two-hours over 8 weeks on consecutive Thursdays from 12:00pm – 2:00pm AEST. Register today to get 10% off. Use discount code ‘NASAOCT24’. REGISTER HERE
This immersive program can also be delivered in-house face-to-face, or online, and can be fully customised to your organisation using the NASA Playbook. If you are not quite ready to become and astronaut, you can check out the 2025 course dates HERE
CRAZY MIGHT WORK OUT & ABOUT
26 & 27 November 2024: Strategic Innovation in Aged Care (Melbourne)
Join us for a mind and skill-expanding program over two days! You will emerge with:
– An innovative solution to your most intractable strategic challenge;
– An implementation-ready pilot solution for testing in your workplace; and
– A new repertoire of contemporary world-leading strategic innovation skills.
25 October 2024: ACCPA National Conference (Adelaide)
The ACCPA national conference took place last week, giving us the opportunity to showcase the Strategic Innovation in Aged Care program, designed in collaboration with the peak body. The program is designed specifically for boards, executives and senior leaders in the sector and promises to solve your most intractable strategic challenge in two days. Leaders work collaboratively with peers from the sector, using world-leading innovation methods to conceptualise and design a pilot for implementation upon returning to the workplace. If you would like to take the two day challenge and learn the latest and greatest in strategic innovation, register on the ACCPA (soon to be Ageing Australia) site HERE
22 October 2024: AIPM National Conference 2024 (Canberra)
Paul Hawkins presented a keynote at the Australian Institute of Project Management National Conference on ‘How NASA Builds High-Performing Project Teams’. NASA’s Stephen Johnson famously said, “Frequently we find that the failure effects and proximal cause are technical, but the root causes and contributing factors are social or psychological… 80 to 95 percent of failures are ultimately due to human error or miscommunication.” If you missed this session and would like to learn how NASA became the Best Place to Work in federal government by shifting the focus to context rather than content, REGISTER HERE
15 October 2024: ELECTRIFY CTO Conference 2024 (Sydney)
This event hosted by the peak body for Community Transport Organisations, was designed to ‘electrify’ and energise sector participants, including industry experts, stakeholders, providers and decision makers. The discourse about equitable and accessible transport explored the challenges, potential and possibilities for a completely connected community through transport. Paul Hawkins’ keynote on ‘DEMYSTIFYING INNOVATION’ introduced the notion of accessible innovation, showing participants how easily they could ‘connect the dots’ and conceptualise new models of service for the sector. As a result, we now have several hundred more ‘creative geniuses’ in community transport!