How to be more successful
If you want to be successful, the old saying goes, find a successful person and do what he or she does. You can learn from successful businesses and programs, as well.
In the early 1990s NASA embarked on a bold, new era. Under Dan Goldin, the agency charted a course for more but less-expensive missions. His mantra, “faster-better-cheaper,” became the agency’s as well.
His vision was first realized in the Pathfinder project. NASA successfully put the mini-rover Sojourner on Mars on July 4, 1997, just 44 months after conception. (The latest rover, Curiosity, is scheduled to land on Mars on August 5.)
In 1998, Flight System Manager Brian Muirhead collaborated with business coach Brian Pritchett to write “The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster-Better-Cheaper.” (You can purchase a copy from Amazon via the button at right.) In it Muirhead and Pritchett discuss the 13 lessons learned from that amazing program. Of those, I found 7 to be particularly noteworthy. Each includes a quote from the book and my interpretation.
As the authors write, these lessons “serve as living proof that ‘faster-better-cheaper’ works in deep space as well as it does on Earth.”