LIFE Lessons Learned as a Project Manager at NASA.

 

These are things that my mind drifts to occasionally.   They are real, they happened to me while managing projects, but had a larger life-changing effect than just a Project’s lessons learned or contribution to OPA.   They affected my personality, my outlook on life and the way my brain works.k

A couple I’ve already blogged about, but in the light of “how we managed projects.”  This blog entry starts a series of how managing projects at NASA changed my life.  I’m sure the same thing has happened to you.  You learn from managing projects and those lessons apply to more than your next project.  They go into your brain and are “compiled” into your personality.  I sat down and focused on life-changing lessons by managing Projects.  

I was 22, a New Yorker and an Engineer who had just started working at NASA, I pretty much knew everything.  All you had to do was ask me and I’d tell you.   Doubting that I’d done a job correctly or if it could be done better, or even that I understood exactly what needed to be done NEVER HAPPENED.  The WBS?  It was perfect.  Risks?  They were all considered and under control.   Requirements traced to the designs = perfect job.   

When I left work, I never needed to think about things like: “Was that smart?”  “Should we change the way we’re approaching a problem.”

NASAs method of having constructive independent reviews of your project plans, decisions, risks, finances, and resources (I’ve blogged about this) taught me that these people weren’t out to hurt me (but it often felt like it).  The purpose of the review was for the reviewee.  Not to entertain the crowd of reviewers.  They were doing this for ME and for NASA. 

The sum of the group conducting the reviews was much smarter than I was.  They saw things I (and the project team) never would have seen.  The reviews were to make sure we as an organization were doing smart things and hopefully not forgetting things. 

Life Lesson:  Seek help from others.  Even if the others disagree with you, find fault in your approach, doubt your assumptions, and generally embarrass you in front of a lot of people and your boss.  After a year or so of this, I realized the best answer to a critical comment is “Thank you!”

This created a life-long habit of waking up at odd hours of the night, and quickly writing down something that I *thought* the reviewers would ask me.  I could hear them in my head.  Things like “Have you checked that supplier’s financial stability?  You’re going to be placing a large order and they have to be able to handle it.”  I’d write that down, or send an email to the team right then.   Actually, I can hear a (in my head) a member of the review group right now as I type this.  

Ask the good folks at ProjectManagement.com!  It not uncommon to get an email from me at 2:25 in the morning saying: “I just thought of something.”  The funny part is that it’s not really me that thought of something – it’s the review committee still rattling around in my head.