Remembering Apollo 13

Exactly 30 years ago on April 13, 1970 astronaut and mission commander James Lovell spoke those infamous words “Houston, we’ve had a problem” from the spacecraft Odyssey, better known as Apollo 13. What transpired over the next 72 hours is well known and documented in history books and in the Tom Hanks film Apollo 13. But in remembering the story of how 3 astronauts found themselves stranded on a malfunctioning spacecraft and were guided home by a team of engineers on the ground in Houston’s Kennedy Space Center, I stumbled on a remarkable story of leadership the likes of which we have not seen too many times since.
If you are reading this blog and are not familiar with the details of Apollo 13, rent the movie or google the story online. In summary, Apollo 13 was the third Apollo mission intended to land on the Moon, but a mid-mission oxygen tank rupture severely damaged the spacecraft and forced the lunar landing to be aborted. The flight was commanded by James A. Lovell, with John L. "Jack" Swigert command module pilot, and Fred W. Haise lunar module pilot.

The mission was launched on April 11, 1970 at 13:13 CST. Two days later, en route to the Moon, a fault in the electrical system of one of the Service Module's oxygen tanks produced an overpressure rupture which caused a loss of electrical power and failure of both oxygen tanks. The Command Module remained functional on its own batteries and oxygen tank, which were designed to support the vehicle only during the last hours of flight. The crew shut down the Command Module and used the Lunar Module as a "lifeboat" during the return trip to Earth. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17, and the mission was termed a "successful failure".

While an entire team of scientists, engineers and astronauts on the ground worked tirelessly to safely return Apollo 13 and its three-man crew, one man was in charge of the entire mission as things unfolded and rapidly deteriorated in NASA’s command center exactly 30 years ago.  Eugene Kranz was Flight Director when things fell apart and is credited with directing the successful return of Apollo 13. Reading the transcripts and various accounts of how the team on the ground worked to solve the numerous problems facing Apollo 13, one can but appreciate the remarkable leadership of Krantz and what it must have felt like to have the lives of three human beings and a multi-million dollar spacecraft in your hands, with the clock working against you. Simply put, very few leaders ever find themselves in a situation anything like that of Eugene Kranz and the Mission Control team 30 years ago. 

The details are vast about how and what Kranz did in his moment of leadership on April 13, 1970 to write for this blog, but I want to touch on some of the salient points that lend themselves to leaders at all levels today. The first point is that the story of Apollo 13 has been over-romanticized by scriptwriters and film producers such that there are major errors in what Kranz said to the team in Houston. There were no Lombardi-style speeches and the phrase “Failure is not an option” was never spoken by Krantz. What Krants and the team at NASA did that was special was to stay calm and collected throughout the 72-hour ordeal and approached the problem, well, like a problem.

When interviewed by the scriptwriters for the movie Apollo 13, Krantz was asked "Weren't there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?" Krantz replied "No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution."

This is the essence of Eugene Krantz’s leadership and how he focused the various teams at Mission Control on solving the problem. He never once doubted that they would return to earth, therefore avoiding a self fulfilling prophecy, but also faced the harsh realities of the extreme situation. Kranz was not able to succeed without the knowledge of many other people. The environment that Kranz created was that of trust leading to open communication, teamwork, shared knowledge and information, and the collaboration of a highly capable team working towards the common goal of a safe return.

Now think about a time when you were in a position to orchestrate a team of people with varying knowledge and skills in order to achieve a specific goal. A conference room in Dallas comes to mind for me, where a dozen consultants from every part of our company were gathered trying to piece together a response to a highly complex customer problem. It was the first time these people were together as a team, and it was the first time they were presented with the 110-page document from the customer outlining their problem.  At noon the next day we were presenting in front of 40 people from the customer and their advisor. Add to that our competitors were Fortune 100 professional services companies 100 times our size, and I can tell you the atmosphere in the room at 2pm was not good. That was a Eugene Krantz moment.

In his leadership of the Apollo 13 crisis, Eugene Kranz showed a great example of brutal optimism. He never once doubted a safe return, nor did he show any fear. When signs of panic started to emerge in mission control, he simply said, “Let’s everybody keep cool”, rather than heightening the panic, and then Kranz continued to address what must be done. The optimism he had, even saying “At no time did we ever consider that we weren’t going to get the spacecraft home”, was that of a trained confidence leading to success. If Kranz had given in to the “pessimism of circumstance” it would be easy for himself as well as his team to fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy amounting to failure.  Kranz focused on what was working, collaborative problem solving, and the common goal of the astronauts safe return.

The leader knows that the brutal optimism they maintain is key to enforce good decisions of the people they are influencing. Decision-making must be collaborative, therefore a sense of teamwork must exist because only teamwork can sustain optimism in the face of relentless adversity and only teamwork can result in actions that are more than the sum of their parts. A leader rarely, if ever, achieves success alone. A high performing leader knows that collaboration is the critical competency for achieving and sustaining high performance. Collaboration is achieved partly through trust and positive interdependence.  A leader needs to trust individuals because performance is dependant upon the knowledge and work of the team. Also people must trust the leader to be making the right decision in order for them to accept direction. Last, team members must trust each other too because they depend on each other’s information (collaboration).

Eugene Kranz successfully created an environment of trust throughout the mission. He felt confident in people to make good decisions even in such a crisis. His team took all of his directions because they trusted him. He achieved this through listening - “To be right is first to listen, then to decide”. Kranz listened to each person’s ideas, made a rational decision based on the knowledge, and then directed others to take action. This was seen in the decision to go through a long power down procedure instead of giving the astronauts rest – a key leadership moment were Kranz had to make a tough call. Kranz listened to three experts discuss the issue, said little throughout, made the decision to power down, and then directed subordinates to act. People therefore respected his decision, because he respected their knowledge.  Kranz left the problem solving to those who could do it best, such as Tiger Team electrical specialist John Aaron, whose long leash allowed him to solve Odyssey’s power problems.

Leaders enable others to act through instilling confidence by support, coaching, recognition, listening, and empowerment. If constituents feel incapable of performing a task, it is likely they will not succeed. A successful leader will coach others to make good decisions on their own. Also necessary from the leader for subordinates to be self-leaders is respect, listening, encouragement, support, and making others believe that they can make a difference.

It is obvious that Eugene Kranz instilled a sense of self-leadership into his team. He encouraged research before acts, confident decisions, and respect. People under his lead felt confident that they could succeed because he gave the power away to them. Also, if a person did not have the necessary knowledge to solve the problem, he held them responsible for finding the knowledge. Problem solving was vital, and Kranz developed competence and confidence, because without this people lack conviction for taking on such tough challenges that were being demanded in the crisis situation.  

Eugene Kranz demonstrated the actions of a high performing leader in the Apollo 13 return.  Through brutal optimism that the mission would be a success, but also accepting the challenge of reality drove the team to confident decision-making.  Also fostering problem solving was collaboration of a team consisting of highly capable individuals lead by a person who trusted their abilities. Under the direction of a great leader, the strength of the team took on the incredibly tough challenge of returning Apollo 13.