Culture crash

cknowledging that a can-do culture run amok was as much to blame as wing damage for the crash last year of the space shuttle Columbia, NASA has hired a consulting firm to reform its management practices.

In February, almost one year to the day after a re-entry disaster took the lives of seven astronauts, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration awarded a five-year contract worth as much as $10 million to Behavioral Science Technology Inc. of Ojai, Calif.

BST-which bills itself as a pioneer of behavior-based performance improvement and lists major aerospace companies and other government organizations among its clients-had 30 days, until March 15, to develop a checklist for change. Space agency executives would review the plan, and then authorize BST to implement it and turn NASA's culture of invincibility into one of safety. In its request for proposals, NASA said it expects "measurable progress" within six months of the contract award, "significant transformation" in a year and "broad changes" in no more than three years.

"There were cultural issues that were contributing factors, and the leadership at NASA determined they needed to take them head-on," says BST President Scott Stricoff. In fact, the request for proposals notes that investigators "found that NASA's history and culture contributed as much to the Columbia accident as any technical failure."

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board's August 2003 report confirmed that the technical failure was a breach in the thermal covering on the orbiter's left wing. It was caused by a piece of insulating foam that broke off the shuttle's external fuel tank and struck the wing after launch on Jan. 16, 2003.

The report also listed organizational causes. It criticized NASA's human space flight enterprise for trying to meet cost and schedule challenges by relying on past successes instead of sound engineering practices. The report said NASA's organizational ethos needed significant structural changes to succeed in the future.

To that end, NASA hired BST. It awarded an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract under which unspecified, firm-fixed price tasks will be issued during a five-year ordering period. The minimum contract value is $50,000.

The company conducted a hasty attitude assessment, offering employees a confidential "mission-safety climate and culture" survey online. The survey was intended to diagnose aspects of NASA's mind-set that do not support its planned adoption of the accident board's recommendations. James Jennings, NASA's associate deputy administrator for institutions and asset management, told Government Executive the survey gauged perceptions about 11 factors that are predictive of safety performance. The predictors included procedural justice, employee-supervisor and work group relationships, management credibility, organizational support, upward communications and incident reporting.

BST will show NASA how to "intervene" in these areas, but exactly how will not be known until agency administrators see the implementation plan and start promoting it to employees. Jennings will kick the campaign into high gear in April with visits to each NASA installation.

With the proper tools and a concerted effort by management, Jennings says, NASA's bad habits can be cured in just a fraction of the two or three decades they took to develop: "I'm optimistic that three years from now, you'll see a difference in this agency."

NASA's 18,560 employees had seven days, from Feb. 19 to Feb. 26, to rate their approval or disapproval of more than 100 statements about their peers, supervisors and management at 10 field installations, and leadership in Washington. Some statements addressed observations and criticisms in the accident report. "There was a push on to get maximum, 100 percent participation from the workforce in order to avoid a skewed outcome," says one Florida respondent. "Those comfortable with the way things are, are the people most likely not to do the survey."

BST planned to supplement the statistical assessment with focus groups and personal interviews with about 200 employees. Interviews with senior leaders began the first week of March. A randomly selected cross-section of employees were to be called together at two field sites, the Johnson Space Center in Texas and the Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Ohio. Stricoff says BST chose Johnson and Glenn because of their divergent rankings in a 2002 survey of the federal government's best places to work.

NASA ranked first in that survey. Among the subagencies, Johnson ranked second governmentwide, slightly behind the Marshall Space Flight Center in Ala-bama and just ahead of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Glenn ranked 55th-last among the NASA installations reporting. "We wanted to get that contrast," says Stricoff.

Only civil servants were surveyed. How to include NASA's 45,673 contract employees in the process was being discussed. "The best way to factor them in is not yet figured out," Stricoff told Government Executive at the end of the survey period. "They are aware, and we are aware, that contractors represent not only a significant amount of money but also a large number of people, and can't be ignored."

For its assessment, BST will have what an agency spokesman calls "carte blanche" access to a storehouse of data about NASA's culture-numerous safety and mission assurance surveys, its accident recovery plan, and its "One NASA" initiative that was under way at the time of the crash. "They are going to take everything we've got from past and present and come forward to us, integrating all the relevant bits of knowledge into . . . the best possible recommendations," says spokesman David Steitz.

Although the request for proposals required bidders to explain the methods they would use to achieve cultural change, Stricoff was unwilling in February to speak about the plan in anything but generalities. "We get down to specifics and focus on leadership behaviors," he said. "We help them understand why the behaviors of subordinates are happening and how to change the system."

For Jennings, there will be two proofs of success: when it becomes clear to outsiders that NASA managers are collaborating across departments to solve problems, and when insiders believe they can express safety concerns without retribution. "Then," he says, "we will have created an environment where folks can do the right thing, without any kind of fear."