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M — Mission & Vision Need to Be Shared
In 1988, I recall a Presidential Campaign showdown between Vice President George H.W. Bush—who served as President Reagan’s VP for two terms—and Democrat challenger Michael Dukakis.
During a campaign interview, Vice President Bush was asked about his long-term vision for the country—big, aspirational goals beyond policy specifics. He responded a bit defensively and quipped that he wasn’t much for “the vision thing.” The point he was attempting to make was that he focused on practical governance and results, not lofty rhetoric.
However, critics and the media seized on the comment as a soundbite weapon, signaling:
- A lack of grand narrative or inspiration
- Being managerial rather than visionary
- Governing without a compelling “story”
As a leader, partly because of this development, I believed it was my responsibility to define a vision for the team. In my first leadership role—about ten years after that Presidential campaign—I outlined a strong vision for our HR team. I had prepared a written one-pager, outlining a strategic view of human resources, based on what I learned in graduate school.
To my dismay, the three members of my group stared incredulously at me. Turns out, they had their own ideas about our vision. We ended up scrapping my initial vision and crafting one together as a team. From that moment, I learned that connecting on a shared vision and mission is much more important than crafting the perfect words.
That lesson served me well, as I continued to move forward in leadership roles.
Lesson: Vision is strongest when it’s co-created, not declared.
I — Influence Up, Down & Across
When I speak to leaders, I share with them the lesson I learned when I first read John Maxwell’s The 360o Leader. His point was that you need a strong relationship with your boss (check), a strong relationship with your team (check), and strong relationships with your peers (uh oh). After reading his book, I started to more intentionally develop relationships with my peers. I scheduled regular lunch meetings with them, and these relationships were key as I moved forward in the organization.
Another mindset I’ve found to be effective is to take on your leader’s perspective. Get a balcony view of things, and consider the priorities your boss has for you. Then, approach your team with those priorities.
Lesson: Take your leader’s perspective, empower your team, and partner with peers.
D — Dream Big: Use “BHAG” (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) Thinking
As a leader, it’s easy to set goals that are SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. In fact, it’s also easy to look at incremental improvements…maybe 5% per year. Sometimes, that’s appropriate, but that won’t lead to transformational change.
When you want to do big things, you have to set goals that feel nearly impossible. At NASA, we were known for making the impossible possible. How about you? Are you setting Big Hairy Audacious Goals, as encouraged by Jim Collins’ Good to Great? Or are you settling for incremental, achievable improvements?
Lesson: Bold goals unlock breakthrough thinking and alignment.
M — Most Important Priorities
Leaders often see a variety of opportunities and many things that can be done better. To be effective, leaders must focus on “the critical few.”
I have found it most effective to establish three deliverables per year for myself and for each direct report. Additionally, I also include one theme or area to target for professional growth and development. Incidentally, learning is becoming more and more important, as the age of Artificial Intelligence marches forward. Those who learn—and who know how to use AI—will take the jobs of those who don’t. You need to be continuously learning and growing to be effective today and relevant tomorrow.
Lesson: Fewer goals lead to higher commitment and performance.
A — Avoid Goal Creep
Early in my NASA career, one trainer noted that NASA professionals often exhibit “more on behavior.” They take more and more work on. While this kind of initiative and ambition helps early career professionals earn a strong reputation, this behavior can challenge your own work-life fit.
I encourage leaders to “avoid More-On Behavior” not only for themselves but also to help their team members do the same. Leaders need to resist adding “just one more goal.” They will be pressured to do so from all fronts. Sometimes, strategy is the ability to “say no.” Stay aligned to the agreed priorities.
Lesson: Discipline beats ambition without focus.
N — Networked Leadership
Are you a “Lone Ranger Leader”? Actually, that’s an oxymoron! If you’re alone, you’re not leading anybody (see my previous post)…
Think of any highly effective leader, and you will find someone surrounded by a strong inner circle. Hire the best people you can, develop them as much as you can, and hand off everything you possibly can. When you have the right team, potential skyrockets!
Every leader’s potential is determined by the people closest to her or him. If the leader’s inner circle is strong, the leader can make a huge impact. If they aren’t, the leader can’t. It’s that simple…
As a leader, you need to build an inner circle and encourage peer feedback. Most likely, you will have cross-goal dependencies with peer leaders. Practice shared accountability and collaboration through trusting relationships with other leaders.
Lesson: Don’t lead alone.
A — Always Learn
Learning is no longer optional — it’s a key deliverable for individuals and organizations.
If we want to succeed in life and learn from our losses, we must face three realities of life:
1. Life is Difficult
In Life’s Greatest Lessons, Hal Urban writes, “Once we accept the fact that life is hard, we begin to grow… Technology has provided us with push-button living… We’re told over and over there’s a quick and easy way to do just about everything… Ads are all around us because the people in advertising and marketing have a good understanding of human behavior. They know that most people don’t accept life as hard and continue to look for the quick and easy way instead.”
2. Life is Difficult for Everyone
3. Life is More Difficult for Some Than for Others: The playing field is not level.
Never stop growing and learning. Interestingly, very few of the Nobel Prize winners ever did anything significant after they were recognized for their achievements. T.S. Eliot stated it even more strongly: “The Nobel is a ticket to one’s own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.” Success can have a way of distorting our view of reality. It can make us think we are better than we really are. Winning causes people to relax and enjoy the spoils of victory. Do that and you just may coast your way to failure.
Put losses into perspective. The next time you have a bad experience, allow it to help you to:
- Accept your humanness. No matter how hard we try, no matter how talented we are, no matter how high our standards may be, we will fail.
- Learn to laugh at yourself and life. Sometimes it’s hard to see the humor during a difficult experience. John Maxwell often tells himself, “This is not funny today, but tomorrow it may be.”
- Keep the right perspective. Psychiatrist Frederic Flach in his book Resiliencepoints out that survivors of bad experiences don’t let the negatives in their lives define them. Instead, they think, “What happened to me may have been bad, but other people are worse off. I’m not giving in.”
- Don’t give up. Ninety percent of those who fail are not actually defeated; they simply quit.
- Don’t let your bad experience become worse experiences.
- Let the bad experience lead you to a good experience. Everyone can relate to having bad experiences in life. But not everyone works to turn the bad experiences into good ones. That is possible only when we turn our losses into learning experiences.
Here are some final thoughts John Maxwell offers on learning:
- Learning too often decreases as winning increases. How do we continue to grow and improve and become more, when what we already have is pretty good? Complacency is the danger any successful person faces. The biggest detriment to tomorrow’s success is today’s success.
- Learning is possible only when our thinking changes. Don’t let what you know make you think you know it all. If you can maintain a beginner’s mind set to the end, your thinking will keep changing and you will keep growing.
- Real learning is defined as a change in behavior. Ken Blanchard said, “You haven’t learned anything until you take action and use it.” John Wooden used to continually say to players, “Don’t tell me what you’re going to do, show me what you will do.” The greatest gap in life is the one between knowing and doing.
- Continual success is a result of continually failing and learning. General George S. Patton said, “Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.” With each successive bounce back, you’ll be able to go higher and farther. That’s what success in life is: the ability to keep bouncing back.
- If you’re in your strength zone, a problem is a challenge, a learning experience, and a road to improvement. That’s why you need to get out of your comfort zone by taking risks while working in your strength zone. When you take risks, you learn things faster than the people who don’t take risks. Political theorist Benjamin Barber said, “The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or a non-learner.”
Identify one professional growth area each year.
Lesson: As John Maxwell says, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.”
G — Group Harmony
How diverse is your team? Diversity brings tension, so it’s often easier to leverage your “like me” bias and surround yourself with people who have similar backgrounds, experiences, and thought patterns. Unfortunately, that will put a lid on your team’s effectiveness. The team will only be as effective as its leader.
Increased diversity has the opportunity to bring more innovation, if the tension is managed well. I like to think of this leadership dynamic as managing through “productive conflict.” NASA encouraged its leaders to thoroughly explore dissenting opinions to ensure all ideas were thoroughly considered—a lesson learned the hard way through the Space Shuttle Columbia accident of 2003.
With a diverse team, you have the responsibility to make it cohesive without losing sight of the individuals—and their differences—on the team.
Lesson: Diversity fuels innovation when tension is managed well.
E — Evolve While Executing
As a leader, you’re responsible for delivering the mission objectives, and this takes great execution. However, you also need to evolve.
Dr. Ellen Ochoa balanced these effectively at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) when she initiated a branding campaign of JSC 2.0 to get the workforce to think differently. The campaign goal was to advance human spaceflight by being lean, agile, and adaptive to change.
As Dr. Ochoa noted, “Only by doing that will we be able to make future exploration missions, leading to a mission to Mars, possible—and possible not just because we solve the many exciting technical and operational challenges, but because we’ve figured out how to do it in a way that: fits a reasonable budget and makes the best use of every person.”
For the JSC 2.0 branding, it is important to consider a new software release. What does a 2.0 software release do? It keeps the best of what is working and makes improvements to the original design. That was what Dr. Ochoa asked each of us to critically examine—wherever we worked and whatever we did.
Dr. Ochoa set the direction to transform culture, processes, and capabilities to align with NASA’s evolving mission portfolio. Her leadership redefined the center’s identity from sole operator to integrator and overseer of a broad partner ecosystem and strengthened approaches to collaboration with commercial partners, enabling the foundations for today’s Commercial Crew and commercial low-Earth orbit missions. This repositioning helped establish JSC’s long-term relevance in a mixed public–private spaceflight environment.
JSC 2.0 introduced tools for innovation, crowdsourcing, and continuous improvement. The initiative addressed structural complexity by improving integration across directorates, clarifying technical authority, and updating governance and decision-making processes to reduce silos, enhance transparency, and enable quicker, more informed decisions.
The initiative accelerated the adoption of digital engineering, collaboration platforms, and improved knowledge management. JSC started laying the groundwork for model-based systems engineering and increased use of data analytics. These steps prepared JSC for more complex, highly integrated space missions.
JSC 2.0 emphasized developing a more adaptable workforce. New competency models, mobility programs, leadership development efforts, and cross-training created greater flexibility across mission areas. These changes helped ensure that JSC had the right skills for both ISS and emerging exploration programs.
Dr. Ochoa positioned Johnson Space Center for long-term leadership by modernizing how the center works—culturally, organizationally, and operationally. Her leadership helped JSC become more collaborative, innovative, and adaptive, enabling success in a complex era.
Balance tension of execution and innovation— both matter.
Lesson: Inclusion unlocks better ideas.
R — Results Today & Readiness for Tomorrow
Consider the Mid-Manager’s Mandate: you have to produce results today. At the same time, you need to lead for tomorrow and manage your team’s readiness for the future.
Both sides of this coin are important. If you don’t deliver on today’s mission objectives, you will not last long in your mid-management role. At the same time, if you don’t prepare your team for the future, your near-term results will only carry you so far.
Lesson: Deliver now and build capacity for what’s next.