You will use this in your written assignment this week. There are links to the JPL website and other articles at the bottom of this page.

THE CULTURE OF THEREALROCKET SCIENTISTS

Celebrations at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, have come virtually back-to-back in recent years. The Pathfinder Lander successfully landed on Mars in 1997, then the Spirit and Opportunity rovers followed in 2004. Later that year, the Cassini probe went into orbit around Saturn.

In the four decades it has been affiliated with NASA, the Lab has dispatched probes to seven of the planets and dozens of their moons. According to the deputy director of Mars exploration Pete Theisenger, "We do interplanetary. ... We're not the only people who can do it, but we're the only ones who have done it for 40 years."

JPL is not owned by NASA, but rather is a non-profit, federally funded research center managed by the California Institute of Technology. It does its work for NASA under contract. What is responsible for this success? One reason: a handful of straightforward rules that JPL has always taken care to follow.

Culture of Critique. For big businesses, research and development is a secretive thing. JPL scientists come from the academic field and live by peer review, in which theoretical work isn't considered sound until a lot of objective eyes have looked at it. When smart people ask questions of other smart people, often as not they get smart answers.

Pie-in-the-Sky Thinking. The Lab has a fondness for wild ideas, going back to the 1960s, when the Lab established an office to dream up plans for future missions. An engineer crunching numbers one day happened to notice that in 1977, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would fall into a rare planetary line up. This insight set the stage for the four-planet Voyager flights during the 1970s and 1980s. Today this blue-sky thinking has become institutionalized with a 20-person group called the Advanced Projects Design Teamor Team X. Scientists with a suggestion for a future mission book time with Team X and pay for it out of their own operating budget. In a given year, 70 or more missions come before Team X, and only one or two are recommended to NASA. The group technique assures that those two missions are well thought out.

Each One Teach One. The greatest resource JPL has is not good ideas as much as the people who generate them. Having Caltech next door provides a steady stream of intelligent recruits. The first thing young engineers who come to work at the Lab must do is learn the culture of JPL as an institution. The Lab uses the concept of "each one teach one," in which senior members of any team are charged with the responsibility of bringing at least one junior member along, assuring institutional memory.

Tolerance for Flops. The true test of the Lab's business model comes when something goes wrong. Every mission means billions of dollars and decades of planning are at risk. JPL not only accepts the likelihood of the occasional costly flop, but also expects it. JPL's first director William Pickering headed the moon probe missions in the 1960s. Pickering's probes flopped six times before Ranger 7 succeeded. The Lab encourages employees to push the limits in a thoughtful way.

In JPL's future are more missions to Mars and possibly to Pluto.

[i]Sources: Jeffrey Kluger and Dan Cray, "Management Tips from the Real Rocket Scientists,"Time Business, November 2005; Hutchinson, Harry, "Another Arm for Mars,"Mechanical Engineering; November 1, 2006; and Markels, Alex, "Guiding the Path to Mars,"U.S. News & World Report,Oct 30, 2006.

The following articles will provide additional information for your written assignment:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about/

https://www.clusterinc.com/articles/how-to-get-jobs-at-jpl

After reading about the real rocket scientists at JPL (refer to the document in the module), please answer these questions:

1. Where do you see JPL fitting in the CVF framework (fig 8.3, page 325)? Explain your choice in detail.

2. Is Person-Organization Fit important for JPL? Explain your answer.

3. Discuss the core values at JPL.

4. Assess and explain the following for JPL:

Is JPL's structure tall or flat? (include span of control)

Does JPL have centralized or decentralized authority?

Does JPL have a simple, divisional, or matrix structure?

5. Would you like to work for an organization like JPL? Why or why not?