As I am writing this, we just learned that we have a new acting NASA administrator. Change and uncertainty keep coming! As we wait for things to settle into a new steady state, understanding “change leadership” can be very helpful. Chris and I have some tips from a recent change leadership training to share.

The training discussed two types of “environments” – Technical/Steady State and Adaptive. Technical/Steady State environment is known; challenges can be solved with improvement of current techniques; there is a state of equilibrium. Adaptive environment is new; there are no known solutions or too many solutions with no clear choice; it is a state of disequilibrium.

This team is great at working in a steady state! We have work instructions, procedures, best practices and problem-solving skills that we use to jump right in to solve technical challenges as they arise. But this moment is different, we need to recognize that we are in an adaptive state and apply different strategies and practices.

Think about what new questions we need to be asking - perhaps that have never been asked before? What assumptions should we question? What is our grounding purpose as a team? What do we want to honor that holds us together?

• Identify the adaptive challenges for your area and frame the most important questions/risks/judgements.
• Disclose/explore the threats to the team/the mission. This keeps the anxiety at a productive level. It can also help us and NASA propose new ways of doing things that accelerate technical discovery or advance missions that become the silver lining from this moment.
• Help your team reorient to new. Resist too quick a response – especially as the answers are not the final answers yet. The budget and the impacts to the team from that budget are still evolving. Practice a pause before reacting.
• Culture – identify what mindsets or assumptions need to be challenged. Support others challenging norms. Enable open conversation – it will help us find the most proactive solutions.

And here are a few more practices and strategies from Nancy Koehn (Harvard historian, author, leadership coach):

• Get comfortable with ambiguity. Model navigating from point to point (within the range of possible); lean forward with credible optimism.
• Keep people “tethered to purpose”. Balance current experience with something bigger than the moment.
• Turn away from “worst case” thinking.
• Conduct expected, regular, consistent, honest and credible communication sessions. Take stock of the situation and re-orient to galvanize our strengths.
• Remember self–care. Allow it in others. We all worry, energize, and wear down at different paces.

Thank you for all you do!

- Lynn Pickett