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The Conference Board Review® Article
Managing out of This World
How a top team innovated and organized to get a pair of rovers to Mars.
Esther Rudis is author of The Conference Board's CEO Challenge: Perspectives and Analysis reports and "On the Record" CEO interviews. She has more than twenty years of experience as a thought leader, analyst, and writer in senior management consulting.
Business literature is peppered with discussions about the importance of being "agile" in a rapidly changing, increasingly competitive global landscape. But nowadays that notion has a lofty, chessboard-like ring to it, calling to mind things like micro-segmentation, offshoring, private-equity plays, and the like. What does agility mean on the ground in this turbocharged environment?
Seekers may find some answers in, of all places, a successful Mars mission. If nothing else, the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) story stands out as a parable about the messy reality of how a senior management team had to constantly adapt, re-think, and reinvent itself, while dodging bullets nearly every step of the way. With an already-daring goal of sending not just one but two rovers to Mars, the team had to overcome landing airbag failure, parachute failure, unanticipated Martian wind conditions, a coating meltdown, lens speckling, a short in a sensor head, and a blown fuse. Post-landing, there was a communications blackout and a stuck wheel. The list goes on. And this was despite having virtually zero margin for error and just thirty-seven months to prepare instead of the more standard five years.
Now, add to these physical challenges the fact that some of the project's leaders had never even met one another prior to the twin-rover project. And don't forget that the entire U.S. space program was under intense scrutiny after two failed Mars missions and the Columbia shuttle disaster. The latter occurred just four months prior to the first rover's launch.
If all that weren't enough to scare the wits out of any manager on any world, this particular Mars landing was pretty much a one-shot deal. The planet is close enough to Earth to attempt a landing every two years or so, but having Mars and Earth aligned as well as they were in 2003 wasn't going to happen again for another eighteen years. Besides losing that advantage if they missed their deadline, there were so many other variables that would change by the time the next two-year window opened in 2005 that the team would have had to scrap a lot of the things it had already built. All told, missing this window was tantamount to killing the project.
So how did they do it? How did a group of senior managers pull off one of the greatest successes in space-exploration history?
From Skunkworks to Spacecraft
As originally conceived, MER was configured as a fairly conventional initiative of NASA and JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), aimed at sending a pair of wheeled robots -- dubbed Spirit and Opportunity -- to Mars to explore the planet's surface. It was organized along the lines of a symphony orchestra. Project manager Pete Theisinger conducted a full complement of talent, with a functional head sitting in the first chair of each section -- plus a few very senior, dotted-line, direct reports.
When things went according to the book, the ensemble performed the way a world-class orchestra is expected to perform. Eyes on the conductor, section leaders know exactly what's expected of them. They lead their sections with passion, accuracy, and commitment. Leaders lead, followers follow.
But when the unexpected occurred -- which quickly became the norm on the team's foreshortened calendar -- out came MER management's alter ego. In this incarnation, members of the top team proved themselves able to improvise like jazz virtuosos, even when, as spacecraft systems engineering manager Rob Manning told me, "their sheets of music had blown off their stands and the stage was on fire."
The DIMES (Descent Image Motion Estimation System) camera saga is a memorable example. The spacecrafts' safe landings depended on a system of airbags that would cushion them upon impact with the Martian soil. But when the airbags were tested on rocks similar to the ones Spirit would likely encounter in Mars's Gusev Crater, they tore whenever horizontal wind velocity was high. And there was no way to reinforce them to withstand the extra stress.
With a planned payload that was growing heavier than anticipated, and with wind velocities on Mars that the team had learned would likely be greater than previously thought, there was a huge risk that the lander would get blasted sideways and crash. What was needed was some kind of sensor that could accurately gauge horizontal velocity -- and be able to correct for a catastrophic gust.
But there was no existing sensor that would not also tip the scales on an already overweight lander. Then, Manning had an innovative idea: a lightweight camera, to be mounted on the lander. Velocity could be calculated by simply having the camera snap two photos in rapid succession. The onboard computer would process that information and command the lander's attitude rockets to make any necessary adjustments.
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Return to the November/December 2007 The Conference Board Review® issue.
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