How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams

CHAPTER 16

Creating the Future You Want

Visioning What You Want

FIGURE 16.1 Reality and Commitment, the Fifth and Sixth of the Eight Behaviors

Optimistic, reality-grounded visions can create the impossible (Figure 16.1). I believe you can easily name the source of these visions:

• Building a heavier-than-air flying machine from bicycle technology;

• “Make my little Newport store the best, most profitable variety store in Arkansas within five years;”

• “I have a dream that one day little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers;”

• “Put a man on the moon and return him to Earth within the decade;”

• “To democratize the automobile;” and

• “A New Physics in Our Lifetime.” This is the vision I used to market the $8 billion Great Observatories program that I describe in detail later in this chapter. One of my colleagues recently said to me, “I don’t see any new physics.” I said, “Be patient, I am still alive.”

Reality-Based Optimism (Hope)

The following is from Jerome Groopman, an oncologist (2003):

Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality. Hope is the elevating feeling that we experience—when we see in the mind’s eye—a path to a better future. Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls along the path. True hope has no room for delusion. Clear-eyed, hope gives us the courage ...