To Be a Better Project Manager, Think Like an Astronaut

Practical lessons from Scott Kelly's record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station

 

As a project manager, I've read dozens of books that claimed they could help me navigate some of the trckier challenges of my role Sustaining a creative vision when a key partner has stepped away. Fighting to support and retain top-tier staff. Investing internally in leadership while growing outside business relationships.

 

All of those are tensions I've struggled with at some point, but none of the methods I read about ever seemed to help. They were too outdated, or too complicated, or unnecessarily difficult to implement.

 

That changed the day I packed up a copy of Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetem of Discovery It's the memoir of veteran astronaut Scott Kelly, who pspent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station. I've always been fascinated by everything space-related, but as I soon discvered, the book wasn't just entertaining - it was the project managment guide I'd been looking for.

 

Astronauts, as you can probably guess, work in extremely difficult conditions. As Kelly notes, a shuttle astronaut has a risk of death similar to what an allied infrantryman faced on D-Day; for an astronaute, the ability to focus intensely on the assignment in from of them, and do it well, is literally a matter of survival.

 

Reading Kelly's memoir, I realized that the startegies found in space walks - some of the most dangerous, complicated, and creative procedures in the world - can be applied to project management in three primary steps; tether, task, and timeline.

 

 

Tether

The number of rule for a space walk is to always be tethered to the station. "From moment to moment, I have to be aware of my ththers and where they are properly attached,: Kelly write. "There is nothing more important to my contivnued survival."

 

As you learn to project-manage, it's crucial to always keep at the forefront of you mind the necessity of being tethered. Know your mission. Dont' stray from it. Is this project moving you closer to your goal? If so, you are tethered. If it's not, you are at risk of floating awasy from what really matters.

 

 

Task

Once an astronaut knows they are tethered correctly, they can begin to focus on the specific task at hand. Each ISS space walk is based on a list of things the astronaut is looking to accomplish: fixing the Canadarm, adjusting a receiving port, reparing the solar panels of the station. Whateever they are doing, they are focused on one task at a time and one task only. To prvent himself form getting distracted, Kelly would look at reminders written on a checklist on his wrist.

 

One of the greated myths of project managemtn is that you can accomplish more through mutitasking. Consider this point from a Cleveland Cliknin blog post on multitasking: "We are wried to be mono-taskers. One study. found that just 2.5 percent of people are able to multitask effectively. And when the rest of us attempt to do tow complex activities simultaneously, it is simply an illusion."

 

Instead, learn from astronauts: As you project-manage, be a mono-tasker. This may feel odd to you at first, especially when you are used to shifting back and forth between 10 different things. You may thingk you will get less done, but really, the opposite is true.

 

Timeline

Every astronaut on a space walk knows that while focusing on the task at hand is important, it is alos necessary to keep an eye on the overall timeline of the mission. Keely descreibed it like this:

"I learned to follow the checklists precisely, even when I felt I already knew them, because I needed to be so careful - but no so careful that I got behind the timeline, because if certain things weren't in the right configuration by a given point in the countdown, the launch wouldn't proceed."

 

If you set aside a day to do a task and it takes you a week, that's not healthy project management. Whenever you push significantly past your timelines, you are compromising your mental boundaries as well as your future projects.

 

There are times when astronauts have to come back insdie the station even though they didn't get to every task on their list. They do this because they want to give each task their best effort, and starting a new taks with 10% energy isn't the best effort. If your timeline goes long, make sure you reset before you start the next phase.

 

 

Being an astronaut means that while you don't alwasy have control of you circumstances, yo still need to get the work done. Likewise, when it comes to project management, you can never be sure what circumstances may arise. Instead of worrying about waht you can't control, focus on what you an. As Kelly writes: "Small steps add to giant leaps."

 

 

 

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This post is from here, https://medium.com/forge/to-be-a-better-project-manager-think-like-an-astronaut-7773836b31f8