Comments on Managing Knowledge and Learning at Nasa and Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Robert W. Mailloux – November 6, 2009

Comments on Managing Knowledge and Learning at NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Beginning

From its very beginnings, NASA was a hodge-podge of federal organizations and agencies thrown together out of fear as a result of the then Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth, on October 4, 1957. “Surprised by the technological feat and alarmed by the prospect of falling behind its Cold War adversary, U.S. Congress established NASA on October 1, 1958, just days before the anniversary of Sputnik’s success.”1

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Figure 1: McKinsey’s 7-S Model2

Looking at McKinsey’s 7-S model (figure 1) for organizational design, it is not hard to imagine that NASA had to go through some serious growing pains. As an assemblage of agencies and organizations (two main ones were the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) that were scattered across the country, each with its own culture, work environment, strategy, systems, staff, style, structure, and skills, NASA was challenged from the very start to build a cohesive organization that could work together, share knowledge and ideas and get over hurdles like the “not made here” syndrome.

In those early years, NASA developed into an organization of large, centralized projects spanning many years if not decades such as the Apollo moon mission. These large centralized projects were a basis for shared values and became a magnet for pulling the other pieces in line and the glue that held them together. In that environment, people were focused on the same big targets and senior engineers and scientists had the time to mentor, nurture and share knowledge with younger colleagues. In the 1960s, with significant White House and Congressional support, partly because of continued Cold War fears and partly because of President Kennedy’s commitment to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, NASA’s budget and...