20 Billion Dollars Worth of Strategic Persuasion

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I just finished reading Shoot for the Moon, a wonderfully gripping tale by James Donovan about the Apollo 11 moon landing. Although I read it for entertainment and personal edification, I did not realize that I would also glean a valuable lesson in strategic persuasion. The story is this: [1]

NASA scientists and engineers began thinking about the problem of getting a man to the moon and back almost as soon as NASA began operations in October 1958, but at the time it was a distant and extremely difficult dream. At that time, the US had managed to get four small satellites into orbit in 13 tries. In fact we didn’t even put a man into space until May 5, 1961, when Alan Shepard went up and came back down.

So you could imagine the shock that hit NASA when just three weeks later, President Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and challenged the US to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. As the book says, they were “aghast”. (Imagine that, a President taking the professionals totally by surprise—no way that would happen today.)

When they began to consider the problem in earnest, there were two principal approaches that were being taken seriously.

The first approach was direct ascent, in which a rocket would take off from earth, travel directly to the moon, then turn around and land. It would then blast off from the moon and return directly to earth. That was the way that most science fiction books and movies envisioned it. It was the most straightforward and “simple” approach, but it would require a massive rocket, far larger than any in existence or in the works at the time. Werner von Braun’s Marshall space center had designed one, but it would probably take to the end of the decade to produce it. But one thing it had going for it is that the most influential committee in NASA, called the Space Task Group, favored it.

The other approach was known as earth-orbit rendezvous, (EOR). Planners envisioned building a space station orbiting the earth, which would be used to assemble a rocket with parts and fuel flown up separately.  It would require more complex maneuvers to permit space craft to rendezvous in orbit, but it could be serviced with the Saturn rocket that was close to development. Werner von Braun’s team was developing the Saturn, so of course they favored EOR, which would require at least two Saturns per mission..

As those two heavyweight groups squared off against each other, a lightweight challenger arose. There was a third way, called lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR), which would involve flying a modular spacecraft to lunar orbit. From there, a smaller spacecraft would separate, descend to the surface, and then rerun an even smaller portion back to the mothership. It was perceived to be much more risky because of the distance involved, and no one took the idea seriously. In fact, when it was presented to NASA by outsiders in 1960, “researchers laughed at the idea.”

In the end, as we all know, the idea that everyone laughed at was the one that won the space race for America, but it was far from a foregone conclusion, and the story of how it happened carries a lot of lessons for anyone trying to get a big idea through a large organization. Let’s rewind the tape back from Kennedy’s announcement and get the rest of the story.

The LOR approach was not totally new. In fact a self-taught Russian mechanic (those Russians again!) had suggested the idea in 1917! The idea was first introduced within NASA by two engineers, Clint Brown and Bill Michael, who wrote abut did not publish a two-page paper about it in April 1960.

Then the hero of our story comes into the picture. A NASA engineer named John Houbolt, began researching the problem and became fascinated with the idea; in the summer of 1960 he had an almost religious epiphany about it, and he vowed to dedicate himself to the task of selling the concept internally. Although he was a quiet introvert by nature, he began evangelizing the idea in “countless briefings, lectures, presentation, and one-on-one talks.” He won a few converts, but not at the influential Space Task Group. His first efforts seemed to fall flat, His listeners were not openly opposed, but no one seemed enthused about it either.

But then the claws began to come out. At a presentation that December, the assistant director of STG all but called him a liar because he took issue with some optimistic figures about weight reduction. He had a point, but it was considered a shocking departure from normal professional behavior.

Emotions were starting to take control on both sides of the discussion. Houbolt pleaded with the STG to just do their homework and look at the data, but for months they refused to do even that.

For a few months, Houbolt kept trying to intensify his efforts. According to the official NASA history, he was energetic, persistent and eloquent—but not shrewd in organizational politics. His first instinct when he failed to persuade others was to find better arguments.

In April he was desperate enough to risk his job by sending a letter to NASA #2 man Robert Seamans, who responded by appointing another committee to consider all possible ideas, which was at least progress. But at their initial meeting, a high level NASA official said “Well, look fellas, I want you to understand one thing. I’ve been right  most of my life about things, and if you fellows are going to talk about rendezvous, any kind of rendezvous, as a way of going to the Moon, forget it.” His words directly violated the charter of the committee, and to their credit they ignored him. They did consider the LOR approach, but rated it a distant third anyway.

In November Houbolt wrote a longer letter to Seamans, fully expecting he would lose his job. Seamans handed it to a new hire named Joe Shea, who “prided himself on going wherever the data took him.” As he talked to others within different NASA groups, they started coming around. Ironically, once momentum finally switched in favor of LOR, the most opposed group started trying to claim it was their efforts that won the day! The crucial point, however waited until June 1962. Von Braun had finally asked to read the papers and was impressed enough that he stunned his own staff at the Marshall Space Flight Center when he publicly came out in support of Houbolt’s idea.

After two years of arguing and campaigning by the proponents of each of the three approaches, NASA Director Jim Webb announced the choice on July 11, 1962. and the US managed to meet its ambitious—some thought impossible—goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Although the decision seems obvious in hindsight, it took a lot of courage, persistence and careful work to get there. When the decision was announced, his division chief said to him: “I can safely say I’m shaking hands with the man who single-handedly saved the government twenty billion.”

But probably his greatest accolade came on July 20, 1969. Houbolt, who by this time had left NASA, was a guest at mission control in Houston when the transmission came in: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” As the room erupted  in joyous pandemonium, von Braun turned to Houbolt and said, “John, it worked beautifully.”

What lessons can we draw from this story about strategic persuasion?

• Just because it’s a straightforward engineering problem, does not mean that facts alone will carry the day. Even rocket scientists need persuasion skills. That’s because engineering problems are never just technical. They’re economic, political, social, and psychological problems at the same time, and anyone trying to get something approved in a large organization has to recognize this.
• It takes time to win people over. As I’ve written before, there are zones of acceptance, and most people don’t have sudden conversions. They need to be moved gradually, and trying to move them to far too fast can get them to dig in their heels and even move further away from where you need them to go.
• Even in a large organization, one person can make a huge difference if they have the commitment to persist in the face of huge obstacles.
• Despite what the chief said, no one can do it single-handedly. Houbolt needed to win allies, and those allies helped to put his idea over the top. It’s especially important to share credit. As Harry Truman said, it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you let others take the credit.
• Sometimes you have to bend the rules—especially if the system is stacked against you. But if you’re going to do it, make absolutely sure you have your best arguments and data available, and be able to justify it for the good of the bigger picture.
• Early opposition, if you can survive it, is going to sharpen your idea and its presentation. Sometimes, rather than arguing against the naysayers, you need to make the effort to understand them, learn from them, and possibly incorporate what will make your idea better.

[1] I uncovered additional detail in the official NASA history about the topic, Enchanted Rendezvous, by James R. Hansen. Available here in pdf.