Cohen, Don | Engineering Papers

NASA NTRS2008

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The topics covered include: The Summer of Hydrogen; Leading Your Leaders; Dawn: Cooperation, not Control; Best Buy: Planning for Disaster The Astronaut Glove Challenge: Big Innovation from a (Very) Small Team; Using the Space Glove to Teach Spatial Thinking; The Power of Story; Interview with Jay O'Callahan; Learning from Space Entrepreneurs; Featured Invention: Laser Scaling Device; Reaching for the APEX at Ames; The Project Manager Who Saved His Country; Choosing and Developing the Right Leadership Styles for Projects; and The Costs of Knowledge.

Prusak, Laurence↗

NASA NTRS2008

The Power of Story

A major knowledge-sharing issue that is the source of many project problems: how to communicate our intentions so that the information received is the same as the information given. One answer is conversation-the back-and-forth of statement, question, and response that gradually brings talkers and listeners to a shared understanding. Stories also offer a way to share knowledge effectively. While the story teller's intent and the listener's interpretation will not be identical, a good story reliably communicates essential knowledge so it is not only understood but absorbed and embraced. Narrative is one of the oldest knowledge-transfer systems in the world. Religion knows it. Politicians know it. Fairytales know it. Now, knowledge management practitioners are coming to know it, too. But why are stories such a powerful knowledge-transfer tool? And what kinds of knowledge do they transfer? Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, defined stories as serving four major functions: the mystical, the cosmological, the sociological, and the pedagogical. The mystical function of narrative lies in its ability to open up emotional realization that often connects with a transcendent idea such as love or forgiveness. He calls this realization "mystical" because it connects the self with the universal. What Campbell calls the cosmological function of stories relates the self to the outside world, focusing on action, on understanding cause and effect and our role in it. For the cosmological function of stories "to be up to date and really to work in the minds of people who are living in the modern scientific world," Campbell notes, "it must incorporate the modern scientific world." We must continually tell stories that demonstrate our current vision of the world. The sociological function of stories, Campbell explains, helps maintain and validate the social order of a society. Stories pass on information about power relationships, taboos, laws, and the inner workings of communities. Countries and religions have stories that serve this function and so do organizations and project teams, where stories about project work communicate information about behaviors and attitudes that are expected and rewarded or frowned upon and penalized. Functioning pedagogically, says Campbell, narratives guide individuals harmoniously through the stages of life in terms of their world today, with its current goods, values, and dangers. These are stories that deal with life transitions and guide us from one stage to another. Stories powerfully serve these functions partly because of two great strengths: their ability to engage listeners personally and emotionally and their use of metaphor. And it turns out that these two things are related.

Cohen, Don↗

NASA NTRS2008

Interview with Jay O'Callahan

Usually stories have elements of risk, trouble, challenge, adventure. These elements are universal because they're part of life. A story gets exciting when someone takes a risk. With risk there's tension and with tension there's energy, and the energy draws us into who the story. NASA's work involves great risk. Sometimes, as with Challenger and Columbia, the result is tragedy. I had a sense the astronauts were invulnerable. They were so well trained, and the engineers behind them were superb. Nothing was going to go wrong. That's one of the reasons the Challenger crew's death moved people so deeply. Christa McAuliffe was not an engineer; she was a teacher and she died, and the whole space enterprise became very human. The Challenger lifted off and in seventy-three seconds the Space Shuttle disintegrated. Seventy-three seconds. That's a day I'll remember, like the day of Kennedy's death. The danger was there, but we were lulled into thinking the space flight was routine. My firm: job would be to talk with MAS people-scientists, engineers, astronauts. I'm sure that underneath the whole NASA enterprise there is a sense of wonder. Perhaps science and myth are coming together in NASA. The myths of old were often stories about the sun, the stars, and the moon. Now with NASA, we're going out there. NASA is turning our eyes heavenward just as the ancients did.

Cohen, Don↗