Four-Dimensional Leadership

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Requirements for Building Technical Teams
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Why NASA Builds Teams
NASA failures are visible and catastrophic.
Hubbles Flawed Mirror
Challengers Explosion
Columbias Disintegration
Dr. Ed Hoffman, Director of NASAs Academy for
Program/Project and Engineering Excellence
(APPEL) funded and guided this work.
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The Duality of NASA Team Performance
Technical Side Education, Processes, Policies
Human Side Assessments, Workshops, Coaching
Review Boards universally name Human Side
shortfalls as causes of project failures!
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Requirements for Technical Teams Development

• The core construct must be logical and durable,
  not management's flavor-of-the-month.
• Assessments must be brief, clear, and actionable.
• Team members need quantitative measurements and
  data, like everything else they do.
• Development processes must be sufficiently
  appealing that busy people want to use them.
• Team members want to see quantitative results
  that justify their time off the job.

4-D Systems has developed processes that meet
these requirements.

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Moving Forward

• Describe a logical and durable core construct

Team social contexts (environments) align team
members behaviors with an invisible field as
surely as invisible magnetic fields align iron
filings.
A coordinate system makes team contexts
invisible fields measurable and manageable.
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Chapter 2 Managing Social Context Manages
Technical Performance
Context Drives Behavior
Would you behave differently in these social
contexts?
Character, then isnt what we think it is, or
what we want it to be ...The reason that most of
us seem to have a consistent character is that
most of us are really good at controlling our
environment.
During the 90s KAL crashed at 17 times the
industry average. Why?
Context drive perceptions and behavior. Team
contexts must be measured and managed.
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Ch 3 The 4-D System A Simple Tool to Analyze
Team and Individual ...
Analyzing Team and Leader Performance
Intuitor
Information
Deciding
Logical
Emotional
Sensor
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Which Icon Goes Where?
Ch 3 The 4-D System A Simple Tool to Analyze
Team and Individual ...
Cultivating Green Growers
Visioning Blue Sky
Intuited
Thinking and imagining, they are naturally and
constantly creative.
Feeling their feelings and imagining a better
future, they naturally care deeply about other
people.
Emotional
Logical
Feeling their feelings and sensing reality, they
are natural team-builders.
Thinking and sensing reality, they naturally
organize and value process.
Including Yellow Hens
Directing Orange Suns
Sensed
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What Do People Most Admire in Leaders?
Ch 3 The 4-D System A Simple Tool to Analyze
Team and Individual ...
1 - Honesty - 80 (trustworthiness)
2 - Competence - 67 (productive, efficient)
3 - Forward looking - 62
4 - Inspirational - 58
The Leadership Challenge Kouzses, Posner Peters
Forward looking Vision, innovation
Inspirational Valuing, appreciating
Honesty Relationships build trust
Competent Directing, organizing
So far, so good!
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CGROs Performance and Context
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Ch 3 The 4-D System A Simple Tool to Analyze
Team and Individual ...
At the 10th anniversary symposium, person after
person described the Compton Gamma Ray
Observatory as their ultimate working experience.

• National Space Club Award.
• Goddard Contractor of the year award.

Terry Watson, the TRW ops manager described the
environment (next slide).
High-performance contexts exist in the real world.
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CGROs 4-D Context Analysis
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Ch 3 The 4-D System A Simple Tool to Analyze
Team and Individual ...
Cultivating Green
Visioning Blue
Team members were given freedom to depart from
business as usual.
Lots of little things like patches, stickers,
mugs, etc. to say Thanks to the team members.
Talented and creative people were drawn to the
program.
Many examples of innovation and productivity
gains.
An atmosphere of honesty, mutual trust
understanding prevailed.
A Can Do attitude was inspired.
Program focused on teamwork and people in
addition to
Program management stayed in touch with the
realities of the program was kept up to date
and well informed.
Frequent face to face meetings time for after
work social events.
Including Yellow
Directing Orange
Would you like to work in this environment? You
now can.
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Moving Forward

• Describe a logical and durable core construct
• Provide brief, clear, and actionable Assessments

• Busy technical team members like assessments
  that
• Only require 15 minutes to complete
• Generate action items and
• Enhance team performance.

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Eight Behavioral Norms and Contexts
Chapter 4 The 4-D Assessment Process
Want this context?
Mutual Respect Enjoyable Work
Willing Energizing Collaboration
Sustained, Effective Creativity
Seeing Magical Solutions
Authenticity Aligned, Efficient Action
High Trustworthiness Efficiency
Outcome Focus with no Blamers or Victims
Clear and Achievable Expectations
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Team Development Assessment Structure
Chapter 4 The 4-D Assessment Process
The rationale for measuring each behavior.
A standard showing what good looks like (e.g.
for Expresses Authentic Appreciation)
Habitually, Authentically, Promptly,
Proportionally Specifically
A set of seven radio buttons Fully meet the
standard to Never meet the standard.
An opportunity to add explanatory comments for
each behavior and the plus and delta
questions.
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Moving Forward

• Describe a logical and durable core construct
• Provide brief, clear, and actionable Assessments
• Provide quantitative performance measurements

Everybody understands using comparisons to
determine goodness. We call it benchmarking.
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Measuring Behaviors to Measure Context
Chapter 4 The 4-D Assessment Process
Histogram of 300 teams average behavioral norms
Low Performance ? High Performance
Which context would you rather work in? Which
context would perform better?
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Benchmarking Team Contexts/Performance
Chapter 4 The 4-D Assessment Process
300 teams first assessments organized into
quintiles,
A sample teams average score
Blaming Complaining are sapping this teams
energy.
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Moving Forward

• Describe a logical and durable core construct
• Provide brief, clear, and actionable Assessments
• Provide quantitative performance measurements
• Make development processes appealing

The voluntary participation of the project,
engineering and management teams who e.g. launch
the Space Shuttle, operate the Space Station,
send rovers to Mars, and prepare for human
Exploration is awesome.
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NASA Voluntary Participation (2003-2009)
Chapter 5 NASA's 4-D Teambuilding Results
1,041 TDAs
11,361 Coachings
4, 294 IDAs
6,814 WPDs
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Moving Forward

• Describe a logical and durable core construct
• Provide brief, clear, and actionable Assessments
• Provide quantitative performance measurements
• Make development processes appealing
• Provide quantitative results that justify their
  time off the job.

We were awestruck when we saw the power of our
eight-behavior assessments to stimulate
behavioral improvements!
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NASA Team Results Summary
Chapter 5 NASA's 4-D Teambuilding Results
We grouped the 198 teams with multiple
assessments into one of five quintiles. The
image below is the 40 teams beginning in the
bottom quintile.
Bottom
Quintile
n
198
NASA 7'08

Planned reassessments, on the intellectual
foundation of workshops, are your most efficient
development tools.
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Efficiency Enhancement per Reassessment
Chapter 5 NASA's 4-D Teambuilding Results
Teams
,
First
and Following Percentile Ranks
Top
Quintile
198 NASA Teams
gt Ave.
Quintile
Average
Quintile
lt Ave.
Quintile
Bottom
Quintile
Teams using 4-D processes increased their average
efficiency with every Reassessment!
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Large Scale Organizational Change
Chapter 5 NASA's 4-D Teambuilding Results
Recurrent Team Assessments a Workshop for the
leaders
Leadership
Recurrent Team Assessments for the rest
Team 1
Team 2
Team 9
...

• Each assessment report debriefing generated
• Three performance enhancing actions they can
  take, and
• Three actions they want help with.
• All 9 teams shared Team Assessment results and
  their actions in a half-day plenary sessions.

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Systemic Performance Improvement
Chapter 5 NASA Results and What You Might Expect
10 of NASA engaged
Annual increase in first team assessments
participation!
Correlation is not causality. Is there another
test?
20 of MSFC engaged
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Conclusion

• We began with five requirements for a
  teambuilding system
• Logical and durable
• Brief, clear, actionable Assessments
• Quantitative measurements and data
• Development processes people want to use
• Results that justify their time off the job.
• We met the requirements with teambuilding
  processes that are gradually enhancing not just
  the teams engaged, but the entire Agencys
  performance. Although workshops and coaching are
  also powerful developmental tools, this talk
  focused on Team Development Reassessments because
  they are so surprisingly efficient.
• They work because they
• Teach while they are measuring
• Use repetition to reinforce learning and
• Use standards to measure, and show what good
  looks like.
• Visit 4-D Systems at NASAteambuilding.com

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Closure
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, its the only thing that ever has. -
Margaret Mead, Anthropologist