How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams

by Charles J. Pellerin

Every successful organization needs high-performance teams to compete and succeed. Yet, technical people are often resistant to traditional "touchy-feely" teambuilding. To improve communication, performance, and morale among NASA’s technical teams, former NASA Astrophysicist Dr. Charlie Pellerin developed the teambuilding process described in "How NASA Builds Teams"―an approach that is proven, quantitative, and requires only a fraction of the time and resources of traditional training methods. This "4-D" process has boosted team performance in hundreds of NASA project teams, engineering teams, and management teams, including the people responsible for NASA’s most complex systems ― the Space Shuttle, space telescopes, robots on Mars, and the mission back to the moon. How NASA Builds Teams explains how the 4-D teambuilding process can be applied in any organization, and includes a fast, free on-line behavioral assessment to help your team and the individual members understand each other and measure the key driver of team performance, the social context. Moreover, these simple, logical processes appeal strongly to technical teams who eschew "touchy-feely" training. Pellerin applies simple, elegant principles from his physics background to the art teambuilding, such as the use of a coordinate system to analyze the characteristics of team performance into actionable elements. The author illustrates the teambuilding process with entertaining stories from his decade as NASA’s Director for Astrophysics and subsequent 15 years of working closely with NASA and outside business teams. For example, he tells how the processes in the book enabled him to initiate the space mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope’s flawed mirror. Free downloadable resources will help Further, you can download and use Pellerin’s most powerful tool for influencing the outcome of any difficult the Context Shifting Worksheet.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Science, Management, Nonfiction, Space

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 3, 2009

Reviews

[Mary (literary_bear) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m already not a big fan of team-building/HR-type books and this one really didn’t do it for me. I appreciate that it has quantitate measurements for how effective the proposed process works but overall, it was clearly engineer-written for an engineer audience.

This isn’t related to the topic of the book exactly but early on, the author also mentions that if he had a gun while going through his divorce proceedings, he’d likely be in prison. This patriarchal (not to mention domestic-violence) mindset is a contributing factor to why it’s so difficult to keep women in STEM. It’s incredibly off-putting and changed my attitude about the text from that point forward. NASA can build better teams when members/managers aren’t making “jokes” about shooting their ex wife.

[Akmal · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that’s intended for highly technical people. The language used is unnecessarily engineering oriented, describing basic soft skills through diagrams and acronyms. Unfortunately, I know a lot of engineers for whom this book is perfect, they often need their need for soft skills described in technical terms otherwise they never make an effort to learn them.

So it’s great for the target audience but insultingly basic for the average person.

[Nadia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had big hopes for this book as someone with professional experience in projects with technical teams.

Positives
Overall, everything useful in this book boils down to:
- Understand there is different people that function differently not only on level business person vs HR vs technical staff, but also within the technical teams themselves. Separate these into categories (what type, it doesn't become very clear from the book).
- When working on a project, assign most efficient class of people according to a project stage / problem type / a customer type (classic project flexibility, I suggest you check the Lean project management methodologies and save yourself the time).
- Tell people about attitudes and values they show you so that they may compensate missing behaviours consciously (assuming they want to and they are provided the resources).

Negatives
- Every second page is marketing about the author's consulting business. Thank you for the materials but I was hoping I see more examples how they were used in practice in the book.
- Some casual sexism?
- Attempt to reinvent the type A and type B person system. The book constantly reminds us that "technical people don't like or understand feelings!", well I tell you from experience this is wrong...Not all technical people lack soft skills or feeling of politics, same way not all non-technical people have either of them. ugh

Highlight of the book: An engineer was asked if he picked everything with a pros and cons list, which he confirmed immediately and had no shame admitting he picked his wife the same way too.

[Héctor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally simple, exceptionally powerful. Teams are not born, are made. And you need all the help you can get to engage your teams to deliver.

Charlie's enormous experience in dealing with complex teams in seemingly unsurmountable technical challenges will guide you through the 4D-System in a way that you will want to start working on it right away!

[Antonina Grecova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Не бих казала, че разбрах всичко в тази книга. Има интересни попадения, мисли и системата като цяло. Разваля книгата непрекъснатото натрапване на 4 D system в PowerPoint, което може да бъде видяно в сайта им и безплатно свалено и многобройни съкращения. Явно системата е работеща и някой от човешки ресурси би я оценил. За мен е лошо структурирана и леко хаотична

[Craig Parvenik · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offers a simple (yet profound), immediately applicable process to support positive team experiences and excellent team outcomes - relevant for all stages of team formation/evolution. Don't wait to use it for the "autopsy" of why your team wasn't successful.

[Ashley Much · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had a few words of wisdom but overall lacked concrete advice on how to build a successful team.

[Oetneck · Rating 1 out of 5]

It just about a management system, the writer created

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. Here I thought this would be a book on the challenges specific to working with and managing technical teams, but it turned out to be just another generic "book supporting a consulting business", albeit one written by someone who used to work for NASA. Whoopee.

The first few chapters invite us to visit their website and fill out some self-assessments (which looked vague and bullshitty), and plant the idea of doing regular assessments and (of course) working with this company's system and coaches. The "4-D system" trademark reappears over and over. It turns out that it's just another variant of the "everyone is a colour" schtick - type As are orange and nurses are green, or something like that. Been there, done that, and there's nothing scientific there, nor is it more appealing to engineers than any other management BS.

I think later in the book it gets into general common sense advice like "learn to compromise" and "give people credit for their good work" and "don't pass the blame", but I only skimmed all this because I have more interesting books to read.

Save yourself the effort and money and just keep the following in mind when managing people: everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and preferences. Figure out what those are and work with them (and don't be a dick) and you'll be a good manager. Try to categorize everyone's individual histories, likes, dislikes, and challenges into one of 4 colourful boxes, and you'll piss 'em off.

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't able to fully comprehend what is delivered by the book until got accustomed with Adizes's management styles classification. This book(and methodology) builds on rather similar concept of:
* Matching people attitudes to classes
* Assigning most efficient class of people according to a project stage / problem type / a customer type(e.g. bureaucratic people to work with government)
* Making people aware of the attitudes/matches so that they may compensate missing behaviours consciously

Definitely worth reading to anyone willing to impact the world, improve teamwork and integration across organizations.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

Space exploration was not easily accomplished. One failed attempt after another proved this was not a task for the weak. Dr. Charles J. Pellerin was blamed for "leadership shortfall". All because of a teeny, tiny, little mishap. Luckily, he was able to redeem himself by fixing the telescope. Thanks to this advancement, he decided to look into forming better team relationships.

This was a very interesting book that included great tips for interacting with others. I think this would be especially helpful for business owners.

[Harsha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book, he teaches good techniques to deal with big and small teams, how to identify people with different potentials and how to put people with right variety of potentials in a team and set them for success.
All that is ok, but there is just toooooo much of marketing about his organization and his services, tooooo much, it is worse than TV and youtube advertisements.
I wish he had it under control, because we have paid money for the book, I did not get that in charity.

[Tomas Bartl · Rating 2 out of 5]

The whole book just feels like self praise which is at least dubious when we take into account NASA as one of the least effective institutions out there. Whole social context assessment framework is simple at first, but gets unnecessarily complicated and various parts are in direct opposition to things stated before in the book.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The formula: write a book so you can promote your consulting practice. Some interesting insights, but really not worth it.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would classify this as "Teambuilding for Engineers". Although the book has a wealth of data it didn't seem to connect to me on a personal level.