All right welcome to the 11 o'clock session 11 a.m central time of big talk from small libraries conference where all of our presenters are from libraries with an FTE or population search of 10 000 or less and this hour we are going to be Serena Bauer from the Jersey Shore Public Library in Jersey Shore Pennsylvania is going to talk about what she's done at her library with programming for adults with disabilities very excited to hear about this and you I was doing this feature your population serve there is the 5,694 is that's yep that's it yeah yeah awesome yeah so go ahead and tell us all about what you've done there at your library stream okay well I'm I'm really excited to be here and my presentation is a little different from the previous two speakers because what I've pretty much done is made like a how-to because my goal for the day is for all of you to be able to do this at your library and I've done the work and the instructions for you and if you have questions just you know ask when just send them in and ask don't be afraid to interrupt me because if somebody has it you know 10 other people are asking the same thing so again I'm from the Jersey Shore Public Library we're in central Pennsylvania not New Jersey and we're part of the Lake Humming County Library system which includes six libraries two links locations and then we have our bookmobile and we only have one full-time staff member four part-time staff and as you can probably surmise from the picture our library is in a church building it was formerly at Worth United Methodist Church the library bought the building renovated it and moved in in the year 2000 so this kind of sets us apart from a lot of other libraries you can see our stained glass windows this is like our adult area and we're very very small library and then our children's room with more of the beautiful stained glass windows it's a great space everybody always says how welcome they feel here we are kind of the beautiful windows yes isn't it amazing and they were covered up when the church was here uh yeah it was um it kind of a crime to cover those up I think but I've I've talked to several of the contractors that worked on the renovation and it it's been so interesting to hear the story of how the building was renovated but we're very small library we basically have the children's room and then our main library room we have a little reading area we have our public computers are right out in the center that way we can help anybody nobody's like hiding in the corner and going oh should I ask for help should I not and the circulation desk we can kind of keep an eye on everything and help people as needed so I wanted to talk to you about the program that I started this year for adults in our community with um intellectual disabilities or developmental or physical disabilities and um there really wasn't a whole lot in our area for these adults and um I began seeing we have a I'm going to get to the next slide here so we have um a group that's fairly local here they're about 15 minutes up the road Clinton County Community Connections and what they do is um they pair these adults with disabilities with like a staff member and they go out in the community and they might help them do grocery shopping go to the YMCA go to the park just do different things um and just give them an ability to be a little more independent outside of the home and go and do places or go and see places do things and I was noticing that a lot of these people were coming in week after week and some of them were coming in two three times a week so I got to talking to them I got to know some of them really really well and um we were told quite frequently that we're one of the few places that they go that they felt very welcome and um they always look forward to coming so I got to thinking and I was like well why don't why don't we do a special program just for them a lot of them are here all the time already we might attract you know some more people that don't have the opportunity to go to these places and do these things so um I kind of sat down I noodled around for a while in my brain and I realized okay first I have to find out is this something that people really want so I started talking to people talking to people is not a problem for me I will talk to anybody so I had my my binder and anytime anyone came in I was like hey question for you um I'm thinking about doing this what do you think is this something that you would want to do um if it's something that you want to do what kind of books do you want to read what kind of crafts do you want to do tell me what you want and almost immediately the response was yes yes this is something we want please let's let's do it one are you doing it so um after I got this resounding yes I started my plan I put it all down on paper so um and I still have the notes in the back of my binder that are just pages and pages that I kind of put together into one plan and just kind of made something a little bit less and turned it into hey we can do this and I figured okay let's try we have a preschool story time here let's try something similar about an hour long we'll include some sort of craft or a sensory activity because I mean who doesn't love that stuff and um I kind of put it together made a plan and then um this this is the most important part so during summer reading I do preschool story time Thursday evenings you do not need to reinvent the wheel with this okay I am not an expert on this type of thing and you know I said oh my gosh when we're planning for this conference I said these people are going to think of me as an expert on this and I'm not an expert on this I kind of made it up as I went along and it just worked it was so cool the way it worked out and I want you guys I want all of you to know this is something you can do you can do it and you don't need to reinvent the wheel um you don't have to make up some elaborate uh bells and whistles story time if you have a preschool story time already guess what you can adapt it for adults um and it's it's very simple to do and we're going to talk about that in a little bit so once I put my plan done on paper it was time to meet with my director um and I want to just pause here and say I am fortunate enough to have um an amazingly supportive director who sometimes I come to her with these crazy ideas and um she has yet to run a race screaming which is great but um I really wish everybody was fortunate enough to have a director like the one that we have here at our library and not just the director the rest of the staff has been really supportive too which is really awesome when everybody is on board um and this is something that we needed the support because nothing like this has ever been done before so um I I had my plan I met with our directors hey I need to schedule a meeting in your office um buckle up because it's going to be cool so I drafted up a calendar and I had the crafts kind of already picked out that I wanted to do this is where Pinterest is your friend um every year I do a summer reading board with the crafts and we share it amongst the staff so I just started adding for my adults too and then I I tried to come up with like a budget for how much I thought I wanted to spend um and then I wanted to cover that because it was my idea to come up with us and we didn't already have it budgeted in for the year um and then the the hardest part and I know with all of you being from a smaller library was that our staff is really limited here um we had to make sure that we had the circulation desk covered um so that I could step out and go do this program so there was there was quite a bit of planning that went into this but since I'm here speaking to you today you know that my director was like oh this is cool we definitely have to do this so um this is where we just started pushing forward and making the plan and starting to really spread the word that we were going to do this and we want everybody to come to this because it's going to be really cool uh and as I was planning with this I thought okay what am I going to call this is it a story time is it a book club um I didn't want to call attention necessarily to the fact that it was a program for adults with disabilities uh and I I played around and we have a whole page of scribbled ideas and um we called it page turners and I thought that was a cool name um you know and it kind of goes with the library and we advertised it as page turners you know weekly story and craft time designed specifically for adults with developmental intellectual and physical disabilities um so that was how we advertised it on our social media um on our website we had signs in the library and we really wanted it to be it was this group first and then saying you know it was for adults with disabilities instead of the other way around because really they're people above anything else uh so we're getting we're getting to the good part here um I'm sure all of us can kind of commiserate on this small libraries equal small budgets um and because this was my idea and it wasn't already figured in for the budget for the year I wanted to come up with something fairly simple that wouldn't take a lot of time um to raise the money so that we didn't have to take money from some of our other programs and funnel it towards this and um again I went to Pinterest I looked at looked at all these different fundraising ideas and you know we have a lot of sports teams in our town we have a crazy number of softball and little league baseball teams that are always doing fundraisers so I chose something a little different and I did a paint night fundraiser um some of you may be familiar with like the wine and design or the paint and sip or things like that so um it just so happened uh I'm an artist my daughter's an artist and um this is this is what we wanted to do we noodle to get around again asking people when they came in would you be interested in doing this what do you think and um everybody was like yeah that sounds really neat so we went on good old Amazon ordered some canvases ordered some paint came up with a PayPal link on the library's website people could click they're signed up for it we made it a very affordable price thirty five dollars per person we've provided some snacks and um it we've really advertised that you can see in the picture here sitting on top of the painting is our library bird Pippin he was a huge help in advertising this he loves to play with the paintbrush so we really um kind of hammed it up with him a little bit to get more people interested and um this was just one of the fundraising ideas that I had you can really do anything if you want to try a paint night though um you don't have to be an artist to do this anyone can do it there's a ton of tutorials online that you can watch that will take you through step by step by step I had people they looked at that painting they said oh my gosh I can't do that yeah you can um we have now done two of these paint nights and every single person has had success and I have taught kids from age five all the way up my great grandmother came to the last or my grandmother she is great though came to the last one and she is 89 years old and she was able to paint this so this is something that you can do and I just wanted to kind of give you an idea on our expenses and this was a really one night you know about three hour time investment um during the actual fundraiser thing of this and we had the paint already in the library it wouldn't if you don't already have paint and paint brushes on hand really that's not a huge expense um and then the snacks I was a thrifty shopper things that were on sale um people love cookies and chips so we went with cookies and chips and iced tea and things like that and for the one night we had a profit of five hundred twenty six dollars and seventeen cents that will that'll cover your program for the summer and and it did so I was able to feel really good about moving forward with some of these crafts because I had kind of brought in the money to cover it and I wasn't taking away from other library resources and so as I was planning this so okay now I have I have the approval from my director I have the money for this now what am I going to do so we started last year working we have a preschool program a school age program a teen program during summer reading and now I call them my adults because they're my adults we have the page turners and we started doing like this cohesive calendar with weekly themes and each theme week was the same across the groups but our activities were different so I've already started planning for this summer and I just went through and planned it out that way I had these cool handouts to show everybody when they came in hey this is what we're doing you really want to come on this week because we're having shark week we'll guess what we're having a second shark week because sharks are so cool and Serena is running your group and Serena thinks sharks are cool so you're getting two shark weeks we really talked it up to them and then we made little handouts that they could take home show their caregivers or their parents anybody else that wanted to come with share it with your friends and I also made up samples of the crafts and we'll get into this a little bit later why it's important to do that but one of the things it I started is we have these calendars posted front and center in the library right by the Cirque desk and then we have all the crafts too so the kids and the adults and even the teens come in and they see everything and they start to get really excited and then within each week I started planning okay we're gonna do this just happened to be the first week we're doing ocean week oceans of possibilities was the theme last summer that we went with so we did ocean week the first week a great introduction to the theme and it was the first week of this so I was really nervous I wasn't sure how it was gonna go and I went through I planned my supplies we were making magnet boards which was a multi-week craft that we worked on what do I need to make those what books should I read and then I started placing the holds on the books and having them sent in from some of our other libraries because I really wanted to have more books on hand than I needed and this last point on here read through the books ahead of time don't read them the first time during the program I speak from experience we got to what was it I'm the biggest thing in the ocean and he was eaten at the end of the book and I was like oh that I had flipped through it and I was like oh this is really cute it's like well that wasn't how I expected yeah that would be a shocker for somebody we all got a really good laugh out of it I was like oh um well then okay I said mental no we're not going to read this one to the little kids tonight but that just all goes on with this you know make a plan but be flexible okay the book did not go how I expected it to go less than learned for me always read through read every word in every book look at every picture or else you know your main character in the book is going to be eaten by I believe it was a giant squid at the end I was like well he's not the biggest thing in the ocean it's fine but you can see I do I like to do a lot of prep work and prep work is your friend in this case because during your story time you just never know what's going to happen and this this I think is probably most people's hang up if they're thinking about this kind of of programming is you know you have individuals with varying abilities and tension spans and guess what it's going to take time to feel it out okay and it's fine it's fine take your cues from the people that are in the room at that time okay sometimes you're not going to get through all of your books that you have planned and guess what that's okay we somehow we got on to a discussion about octopus we read this really great book I can't think of the name of it now it was a true story about an octopus that lived in an aquarium and it got out of its tank one night and it squeezed through a drain pipe that was like this big and it was like a big octopus and so we we followed that trail and we pulled out our nonfiction books that we had and we talked about okay an octopus really can someone can sit through paper towel tube that is insane and I had staff members coming in and telling me you know the the parents are saying that they're hearing all these things that you're talking about and that was that was how I knew that we were making a difference here and yeah don't be afraid if you get derailed it's fine if you are open and honest with them if you don't freak out they're not going to freak out basically they're everybody is so forgiving and we are harder on ourselves than anybody else is on us and you know like with the book the biggest thing in the ocean I was like well that was not what I thought it was gonna be oh my gosh and you know we all got a good laugh about it and then we moved on so you know don't don't be afraid basically uh so another note on the box I'm trying to jump ahead here so again on the the lines of organization you know I have a box it's like a milk crate but it's a little bit smaller and throughout the week my programming usually falls on Thursdays so Monday and Tuesday I'm getting stuff collected I'm putting it in my box okay Thursday comes around all I have to do is go grab my box I know that everything I need is in there plus some okay I can come in for um you know a story time that starts at 6 30 I can come in at 6 20 grab my box and I'm good to go like I because I know that I'm properly prepared so there really wasn't a good place to put that slide in so I just kind of stuck it in there but you know prepare ahead of time have everything ready to go and life will be so much easier for you so now the books I was really concerned about what type of books to read uh yeah and I I talk to them again communicate communicate talk talk talk that will solve so many of the world's problems if we would all just talk about it but when people came in I started asking them you know if you would come to the program what kind of books would you like to read and I just kind of left it at that and sometimes if they needed a little prompting and say okay well we you know do you want picture books do you want nonfiction books chapter books do you want to do a chapter out of a book each week what what do you want to do because it's it's for you and uh what I heard from just about everybody was now picture books books that are simple to understand so that's what I went with um we did mostly picture books uh but I threw in some nonfiction we had a pirate week I had a book about pirates and what it was like to live on a pirate ship and we talked about that and we kind of gave each other the jobs that you would have and like well your job is going to be to swab the deck and your job is going to be to this and it just you know I tried to really include them in this planning we even um I had a poetry book and it was so funny in the poetry book it had a wrap in it um I can't wrap uh I can't wrap to save my life one of the staff members that came she actually did the wrap um and this happened in like July we're still talking about it uh it was it was just so much fun and it was just we were all being silly and trying to get the timing right and that and some of them were just rolling laughing but um if you know picture books I also do preschool story time guess what I was double dipping with the books so the books that I used for my adults in the morning I would use the same books in the evening most of the time and I didn't I didn't want the extra work of having to choose two separate sets of books especially because some of the books were really good and um you know that there was no reason to do an extra set of books but with the picture books um I will tell you it was weird at first sitting in front of a roomful of adults and reading picture books um and doing the voices and all of that I was like oh gosh they're gonna think I am such a weirdo no they didn't well I mean they did but they already knew that they already knew they knew that long before they walked into this program um because they knew me from coming in so I was just like you know what I'm the only one feeling weird in this room so uh it it's something again don't be afraid don't be self-conscious you're harder on yourself than anybody is going to be um and I chose the books that I knew were going to be fun to storytell and that would lend themselves to conversations that we could have while we were reading um I love storytelling and being dramatic and you know getting the the big motions and the voices and all of that and when I'm doing my preschool story time in the evenings we're in the children's room and we'll have adults wandering back and like looking in to see what we're doing because we just I mean if we're gonna commit we're gonna commit so um I I really like to draw them into the story and I'll ask them questions like oh what do you think's gonna happen next um hmm do you think he sees that shark behind him I don't know uh and you know we read a book about going to the beach how many of you have gone to the beach you know what was your favorite thing at the beach and you know just trying to get some side conversations going and then they get really excited about it too which which is what I want um and then you know this I was going over these slides uh with my husband last night and he goes oh my gosh this is a true story anytime anytime I read this a beach book everyone hears this story like guys I went snorkeling one time we were down in Bahamas there was this moray eel that thing was like the size of my leg it was so big it opened its mouth and I'm underwater screaming through my snorkel the last time I've ever been snorkeling uh and then you know that that is kind of like yeah it's just me I'm afraid of snakes you got something that looks like a snake underwater I am out of that water and that just opened the door for a lot of them to kind of chime in and share something and it was great um you know the time you went body boarding and you ended up with half the ocean up your nose you know this is what I want them to come and have fun and um you know if we don't get to our third book it's fine you know as long as they're having fun it's fine you know this is this is what it's all about um and then some of the books because I was afraid I didn't want to read any books that we're going to be like them thinking this is a baby book I don't want to why are you reading us baby books um and if there was anything I think there was maybe one it was about um mermaid bunnies these bunnies turned into mermaids and went swimming I wasn't too sure about it and I just couldn't find some really good mermaid books that weren't like the little mermaid so I said well I I want you guys to test this out because I want to read it to my little kids tonight so you need to tell me if I should read it to them um and they loved being the test audience on this they loved telling me what they liked about it what they didn't like about it and um it it just worked out so well and that was something I just came up with just like off the cuff I I hadn't planned to ask them for their feedback on it but I really loved it so there were some other books later in the year I was like what do you think should I read this one uh and we had one I just read smooch your pooch one of my favorite picture books so cute and I told them you know this they read this at preschool story time yesterday and I told her you are not letting any of those kids check this book out until I use it tomorrow for my story time because I have to read this one because it's so good um so they they were like oh you saved the book for us of course I did because I save all the cool stuff for you guys uh so in addition to all of our books and I know I'm going through a lot if you have questions ask okay or email me afterwards um and I will send in the slides so you can do these um so we did an activity as well as the story time I'm sure that you can kind of figure out by now it's a high energy day when they come for this um everybody's worn out by the time they leave because I'm just like I'm ready to go all the time so we're reading books and we're doing crafts and like I said put your crafts out ahead of time so that people can see them they can get excited about them like oh my gosh I want to make that it also gives you a chance to see how long it's going to take and if it actually works um I've only had one be an epic fail we were trying to make um sun catchers out of CDs it it did not work I was 20 minutes into it and I said nobody's even gonna want to do this so um maybe for the teens for the adults I said I'm getting bored with this I don't even want to do this it was such a cool idea but it just didn't work so I knew like okay we we really just shouldn't do this but I wanted crafts that would work for somebody I didn't want like preschool crafts for them because they're not preschoolers they are adults um they might not have the fine motor skills to do some some crafts but we will find something they can do so we made these magnet boards and they were a multi-week activity we just got pizza pans from the dollar store uh and we went oh my gosh my boss brought me two bags full pizza pans we still have some that we're going to use um but each week we would add something to it and the first week we painted them blue that was so boring if I had to do it again I would paint them all blue and then just have them we added the coral one week we made shark magnets you can see on the one down on the end there we made shark magnets during shark week we took everybody's picture and I photoshopped them into a little scuba diver and made a magnet out of them and then I took them all and put hangers on the back of them and put like a spray of clear coat on it so that the paint didn't rub off and then they got to take them home so it was an activity that kind of built on itself every week and um because I wasn't sure who was coming each week I made sure to go ahead and make extras so that if somebody wasn't there to paint theirs blue but somebody was there the week we did the coral they could just pick right up and paint the coral or if somebody came in on shark week I had painted the coral on some of them so they could add the sharks that week so um this this was really neat and we still have one hanging in the library that some of them look for every time they come in and um it's useful because they can hang little notes on it with the magnets or pictures or anything like that or just move the sharks around and um they're they were just such a neat activity I think the teens even ended up doing them uh because they liked it activity I want one of those now I've got pizza pans call me I've got pizza pans let me tell you what um another another thing that we did um during shark week was uh and I did this when I went to the elementary schools and um we had fun and I'm sure you can tell I am not a quiet person okay they let me in the library I don't know why but this was so cool and I had um we had the table set up in a U shape and I had nonfiction books about sharks on the tables when they came in so they could be looking through them I said I have a challenge for you we are going to see how many kinds of sharks we can name so the record at the elementary school was 12 okay these adults they were like we got this sit back buckle up we got this we named 26 and it was the more excited I got the more excited they got and um yeah we were and they put us downstairs in our community room because the groups were so big like some weeks I would have 20 adults that would come to this program so this is do this try it try it see how it works in your library so I got pretty loud down here and if somebody named a shark that nobody else knew about guess what we were looking through that shark encyclopedia book um our favorite was the wobby gong shark because it just it looks like a muppet it's the coolest thing and like I I taught them all about sharks I'm like well do you know the hammerhead shark the shape of its head is called a cephalofoil and it has all of these little like pores around it and they're called the ampule of Lorenzini and they detect the the electrical field of these other fish around them and and they're coming in and they're they're telling me oh remember the the linguine that was on the cephalopod like yeah I do um the the ampule of Lorenzini uh and they were telling everyone they learned these great big words and you know we talked about a whale shark and have you ever seen an angel shark or a goblin shark and we just we we got really into this one and it was a great time to break out the nonfiction books and guess what some of them checked him out and took him home and looked through them and what is cooler than that like I I wanted them to really get into this and they just blew me away with it we do have a question you know I'm gonna jump back to before you get too far with that uh activity the craft activity with the um magnet boards and everything um so let's know um did anyone get upset that you worked on their project when they missed a day yeah you said or were they just happy to be doing what everyone else was doing when they actually did come back was that any sort of a I I did not have anybody that got upset um if there was someone that knew they weren't going to be there the next week I had one that she had an appointment or something and couldn't be there the week we painted the coral but she came in another day that week and I am totally flexible I said hey do you want to paint your coral today while you're here so they painted their coral um at the actual time sure sure yeah it was you know I had a drop cloth I had to paint why not um I I didn't have anybody get upset which is good I mean you might um you might and then don't do that I guess um but I I didn't work on like I made extras I didn't work on anybody's that was coming um that had started one so I guess I wasn't clear on that like if they started it if they weren't here the week we did coral um you know if they came in another time we could do that or they could stay a little bit after the next week to um to finish it up because I didn't want to I didn't want to make their craft for them uh but yeah that is that is something to think about and like I know most of them so I I kind of know who would who would react like that and he would be like go ahead I don't want to paint coral anyway like he wants to paint coral having that relationship is important yeah oh my gosh yes yes um and we have like one one of my adults came in this morning and I could always hear him coming up the steps because he's always like dancing up the steps and stuff he comes in the door hey you say hey what are you doing um and that's just like the relationship that we try to foster is to make them excited to come to the library um and with him he'd be like not you paint my coral for me I don't want to paint no coral uh but yeah that was that was a really good question I would recommend you know don't give them the opportunity to do it or say would you like me to do this you know after the next session would you like me to paint the coral for you um would you like to do it or would you like me to do it um you know and maybe there's if anyone has a better suggestion shout it out um because you know there's I don't think there's a right way or a wrong way to do it um but moving on um the ocean trivia game was so much fun and um I think I probably drove my co-workers crazy with this game um because I was trying the questions out on them um I made up all my own questions and um I used a trifold board that I had torn apart a book that like was on its last legs ripped all the pages out of it mod podged them to this trifold board and this trifold board has been everything um I just tape everything on it and I can reuse it over and over and over again because I don't have a huge budget and it's very wasteful to buy a new one all the time so uh mod podging the book pages to a trifold board try it it's so cool and it just makes a cool background but um you know I made a little jeopardy board we had um ocean creatures ocean travel ocean activities ocean uh facts and sharks because what's cooler than sharks and I made this I have to comment because someone else did too in the chat that love your shark dress there isn't that cool yeah the shark dress was very popular um you know I totally misfrizzled it up when I traveled to all of the elementary schools yeah the shark dress was super cool um I ordered a shark dress and a mermaid dress and the shark dress one hands down one of my co-workers ended up with the mermaid dress um so when we worked together like we were the dream team of awesomeness uh and yeah this get into it don't be afraid to look silly uh I made up all these questions for the elementary school kids guess what they worked perfect for the adults and what I heard the most was it was so cool to play a game that wasn't on a screen this was a game you could come up and pick the question out of the little pocket if you wanted to um for the adults we didn't break them up into teams I just let them pick a color and a number um I say okay would you like who wants to pick next okay go ahead and pick uh okay so purple for 200 that's ocean critters here's your question and they had a chance to answer and if they were like I'm not sure say okay anybody else want to help them out um sometimes they needed hints nobody knew what scuba stood for um even at the elementary schools and um I had some picture clues to say okay everybody don't shout it out but think what is this um and it would be like a picture of a kayak or a killer whale or a dolphin or something like that that was in our ocean creatures um and you know everything the game I played oh my gosh I played this game so many times with the elementary school kids I was ready to just like leave it somewhere but um they had so much fun and if they didn't want to answer a question or pick anything they didn't have to it was fine I don't you don't want to play you don't have to you can just watch um and and you might have some that do just watch and that's fine it's still enriching for them to be there and to hear it and maybe next time they will take part um so this was kind of my favorite stuff that we did the sensory activities uh our cleaning lady she just loves me um I won't tell you that right now um I am not allowed to have glitter ever um if I even think about glitter she's like I no just take it outside no so okay you're not gonna let me have glitter I took a kitty pole put it on a tarp filled it up with sand in the library it was awesome um we got little jewels and coins and you know we we let them dig in that I had the kinetic sand which was really cool I was like what is this this is so weird like it's kinetic sand it is weird but it's you can't stop playing with it um shaving cream I didn't do shaving cream um because I just didn't have an activity for it uh shaving cream is fun it's easy to clean up the water beads um I I have about 40 000 pages on water beads because they were just so popular um and we did a ton of activities with those um but like for our pirate week we did digging for treasure and I couldn't find my intention was to make these treasure boxes out of the wipes containers well uh everyone in our town is environmentally conscious and buys the refillable ones so I couldn't get enough of those so okay we buried everything we were flexible and they got to dig up the treasure and most of them used their hands but I did have some shovels um and they like dug in and we're nobody was digging like a dog thankfully but they dug it in then they came to me and we traded a demand for treasure out of the treasure box and it was like some some leftover something reading prizes candy like little things like that um and then there was some in the kinetic sand too and the the younger preschool kids guess what activity they did we took the jewels away because they were smaller and I didn't want any like up anybody's nose or anything like that so they dug up the coins and traded them in for like a little prize like a lanyard or something from the library these were the coolest that we did and we still have one up on the desk I do have to tell you though um after a while they kind of start to smell um and we tried like taking the beads out and washing them and it they just apparently break down kind of weird so if you make them just don't put the don't take the lid back off later but um this is these containers are filled with water beads and then when you pour the water in it makes everything kind of this fish is kind of kind of on the bottom but the fish look like they're floating we had a lot of people we had one at the desk like oh is that a real fish in there no no it's not but we bought a box of aquarium plants off of amazon and we just kind of cut them into smaller pieces we got some glass jars and a bag of aquarium gravel and for as little expense goes into it they they were really cool and what's great is they could have their own pet fish and they don't have to feed it or clean it which was great but the water beads um if you have anybody that you think might eat them then don't use them don't use them or if you think you have somebody that's going to put them in their ear up their nose just don't use them because if you you don't want to take that chance they're also very very very very very very bad for the sewer system so don't rinse them down the drain ours when we were done with them I laid them out on towels on the tables in the community room and let them dry out they only take about two days to like they come they're really really tiny um like a mustard seed size and then they get huge um I filled a jar of them like a big two gallon jar one day left work came in the next day and they were like oh my god those things were over flowing they were all over the floor they were all over the counter oh yeah they were uh so they they get huge I ended up just putting them in big like rubber made bins which was great and then don't don't dump them outside don't let them dry out and then either dispose of them properly or let them dry out and save them for something else because playing in them is extremely addicting um I had to hide them from my co-workers because they would not stay out of them they would constantly be back in the work area and like playing in them and I'm like we get out of those I need those from my program tomorrow what are you doing so eventually I just got that same big two gallon jar filled them up I said here this is your jar you go play with those leave these for the programming I I really could not have predicted how much and even the little kids we made sure the parents were with them and I was like sitting like in the lifeguard chair watching to make sure nobody was putting them up their nose or anything they like to throw them which I don't recommend but that was better than putting them up your nose but you know the parents were basically one-on-one with the kids because we turned it into an activity we'd not only use them for the aquariums but we did diving for pearls I got some beads put them in the bins I had them in the big rubber made bins put them in I had them just on tables around the community room and like mixed them all in so they were kind of suspended and you wouldn't believe how hard it was to like find them because of the way it refracts the light trying to like reach in and find them and make sure you have paper towels or towels handy and what what I found was really cool with this is that some of the people they were like I don't know I don't want to touch that it looks like frogs not I don't know those that were hesitant at first within 10 minutes were like up to their elbows just playing in these and it I mean how many places can you go that you could do that you go to the library because that's where all the cool stuff is so this was something that we added new last year was at the end of the summer why don't we have a dance party um so everybody was super excited we read all of our books and I we talked up this dance party we did it the last week of our program I decorated the community room I found a disco ball we had some crazy lights I turned off the lights I had a lot like the beach boys and the teen beach music soundtrack oh my gosh it's so danceable and we put out some snacks and things like that and um I was pooped by the time we were done because I was there dancing with them we were doing all these group dances and um those that were hesitant to join in at the beginning or those that you know kind of sat on the periphery even joined us and um it was it was just the coolest thing that when we wrapped it up um this is a moment I'm getting chills right now thinking of it I won't I won't forget it one of my adults that comes she is non-verbal I had never heard her speak she doesn't like to participate much but she likes to come and after the dance party you know she danced with us and um she hugged me and she said thank you and it was the first time I'd ever heard her speak and um that was when I knew that this program was like this was a success this was awesome um and like during the dance party the staff or the people that you know the families that brought them they were kind of like we're not dancing okay fill out a survey for me so I had questions for the staff on the survey and questions for the participants and um they were pretty simple yes no questions and um everybody did the survey because I was like I'm not letting you out of this room until you do the survey so let's let's do the survey because it's awesome because I made it um so they they really um had some really great feedback and at the end I collected all of them and um used them to kind of see what we could do different next time and I still have them so that as we're planning for this year we can you know go ahead and look through them uh so oh my gosh I'm running out of time what are we doing now uh we're doing a pop-up story time and it's just once a month right now because um we we just don't have the staff to cover the desk and all of that um so we just did the Valentine's Day Love Bugs we're going to make um this really cool um like St. Patrick's Day Gnome it's just a sock with some rice in it but I'll go through and kind of wrap it up um so basically we went over how to get how to make this happen okay um find your funding get support from your director if you are the director get support from your staff um the most important thing is uh just to be flexible know that things are going to change and evolve um if you have someone that wants to sit on the periphery don't force them uh let them let them come to you um you know just be aware that you know disabilities come in all shapes and sizes uh not all are visible I had always had some tables set up around the outside of the room um if someone wanted to stand in the doorway that was fine I let them stand in the doorway sometimes they came in sometimes they didn't um and you might have someone that is visually impaired um so I described the the uh pictures in the books and you know we described that if anybody wanted to add something and tell her like oh yeah the fish has stripes and he's purple and he's got curly hair you know we would try to paint a really good picture for her because she couldn't see it how we did so we really helped her with that you know just just adapt meet them where they are um if you don't learn anything other than this today don't assume anything um help only when you're asked uh just because someone looks like they're struggling to you they might not be struggling they might be you know it might just be normal for them only help if you're asked um if someone has a service dog please remember ignore the dog um and um basically let them ask questions tell you things let them guide the experience um and I know I just blew through the last couple of slides but I know I'm out of time yep yep no problem um we do have a couple of questions here that I do want to get before we do um wrap things up so thank you so much for this was great I think we just did at the end there it was when your slides earlier like let them lead the oh yeah going on yeah that that's very definitely important with this um so uh I think you did mention this but did with their caregivers or family members who stayed with the adults who were attending it was always some sort of like yes um almost all of them stayed the whole time and um that's something like I I never worried about that because I knew most of them um I never worried about anyone leaving um with something I couldn't handle um but most of the time someone would someone would stay with them and help them with things like we had hot glue guns when we did the sharks I said this hot glue gun spits out lava I said I want your staff members to use this or your you know your mom your aunt whoever I don't want you burning your fingers let them burn theirs um you know uh the hot glue guns were one thing that you know I if they wanted to try and we thought it was safe we tried it but um yeah typically just about everyone was one on one with having um someone that was typically abled being with them to help hmm awesome um definitely a good idea uh so here's uh someone who has a interesting situation themselves well um while the adults and their staff want to come attend programs at our library the similar the adults with different disabilities like you've been talking about we had pushed back from the organizations that said they didn't want the adults in disabilities in group with other people with disabilities the organization said it defeated the point of sending their clients out in the community to interact with the general public they were told to leave if other people were just with disabilities came to the programs did you receive any pushback like this from any of the organizations you worked with um like this similar I'm sure you can tell by my face no um no there there was I'm trying to think of what the rule was um that they had it was like only six of them were supposed to be anywhere at one time or something I'm not sure what it was about it was their role not mine um and I don't know if it was like a COVID related thing or not uh I didn't inquire further I not my circus not my monkeys um their roles so um no I I don't know why anybody would say that um but I get trying to their one point of defeated the point say them out into the general public things but this is a program that is specifically geared towards right and they're so if they don't want them to attend it then they they wouldn't right if I mean I I would want these organizations that help that work with these people any of the people with developmental disabilities to make this happen in the first place right I would be asking them well you know what is you know why I'm I'm not afraid to ask well why why do you have that rule um because you know this there's very little programming in our in fact I there's like none in our area for these adults and once they age out of school there's not much that's made for them which is why we're doing this and it it's been hugely successful and we've had great support from these organizations I've never had anybody tell me uh well we don't want them together um that that's just strange to me maybe they have the rule for a reason that I don't know about though um I'm I'm not sure yeah yeah um okay um all right I think we're gonna have to wrap up right now we do have to get into our loon time lightning round session so thank you Serena um are you um we're asking about your contact info is um your email address my email address is on one of the slides here um let me see if I can get it back up quick uh yes please email me um I would be happy as you're getting is it at the beginning side or it's one of the beginning ones here um oh gosh I have so many well there's what we'll do um there we go awesome there's there's my email okay so anyone wants to ask any other questions Serena anyone who um wants to follow up with her on anything definitely uh reach out to her at please address there I'll give you all a couple seconds to get that yeah and I will send you my slides so they can download them too if they want uh yes yes and I should mention that too yes all of our um recordings when they are up will include the presentations from the presenters as well so anything that's on these slides don't try and scribble it down don't worry about that they'll be available afterwards with the archives all right thank you so much Serena we are going to jump into our lightning round sessions now


Welcome to another in the series of guest lectures on NASA's program and project management. Today we will be discussing management issues as they have appeared in the men's spaceflight programs. Our participants are Aaron Cohen, director of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Henry Pol, JSC's director of engineering. I'm Joe Loftus, assistant director for plans at the Johnson Space Center. I'd like to begin our discussion by asking each of our participants to briefly talk about themselves. Aaron, would you briefly summarize your career since you graduated from Texas A&M and tell us a little about what you did before you became a manager? Okay, after getting out of Texas A&M I went to the Army from 1952 to 1954 and then from 54 to 58 I was with RCA, Radio Corporation of America and then from 58 to 62 I was with the General Dynamics Corporation and then in 62 I came to the Johnson Space Center. I had various jobs at the Johnson Space Center primarily in the guidance navigation area and managing that activity with the Draper Labs, MIT Instrumentation Lab at that time and then deputy of the Systems Integration Office. In the period of 1968 to 72 I was command service module project manager and then from 72 to 82 I was the Arbiter Project Manager, 82 to 86 I was the director of research and engineering and from 86 to the current time I'm director of the Johnson Space Center. Thank you, Henry. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself? Well, I graduated from Texas A&M too. I was drafting, spent two years in service. I started out as a test engineer on Redstone in Huntsville, Alabama. I worked on the Jupiter on the Saturn. I got in some design work, design the small rocket motors that we put in the wind tunnels up at the telehomba. I came down here, I was subsystem manager on the RCS for Apollo. I was section head from about 64, 65, I can't remember when, to about 67, branch chief from 67 to 79, division chief from 79 to 86 in the propulsion power division and in 86 I became director of engineering. Very good. Erin, would you briefly summarize what you think are the key things that a manager must do to achieve success? Well, I really think that one of the key things is have some, in your career, have some early hands-on experience. But I think you have to start out with saying that the key elements or the exact elements of managing, being a good manager of the programs of yesterday or yesteryear may not be exactly the same key elements of today. So I think you have to take, you have to understand that. I think we have to start with that point. The new program managers, project managers are going to have different pressures than the old one. On the other hand, I do think there are some factors that are common. One is I start off, I think some early hands-on experience is important. Whatever small project they may be, to carry a project through, to see how drawings are made, to see how a design comes about, to see how parts are machined, how you process parts in the factory, how you do the testing, I think that's all very important. If a person can do that, I think you set a good foundation for a project manager. Of course, that is one item I think that's important. The other item I think is key, is very important is you need to be patient. You need to understand people and be people-oriented. You need to be able to communicate with people, communicate with people both in all directions, downwards, upwards, and laterally. You need to be able to communicate, be people-oriented, and make people feel you want to hear what they have to say. I think you have to be able to take criticism. You've got to be able to take criticism and not become defensive and do that type of thing. I think you need to have to know when to compromise. You need to know when to compromise and get a solution rather than argue for a point that you feel that strong. Those, I think, are some of the key elements that make up, I think, the attributes in programs for yesteryear and programs of tomorrow, or similar key elements, I think, in a person becoming a program manager or project manager. What are the major changes that you've seen in the management of NASA projects over the years? Well, I think the two big programs that I managed was the command and service module for the Apollo program. And Henry might want to add a little bit on this. And then the Arbiter, the one in the 60s and one in the 70s. And I think if you had to say the differences are the pressures you may have, both a little bit from the external pressures. If you go back to the Apollo era, I think if you look at the Apollo program, I think you see the key thing you had to do was to look at performance. I think performance was primary, schedule was second, and then cost. And I think those are the three elements, of course, of program management or performance, schedule and cost. And those are the three trade-offs that a program manager has to continually do. I think in the shuttle era, you still had performance was still very key. Still, I would say, number one. But I think cost was an overriding schedule. I think cost was more important than schedule. In the space station era, I'm not sure I can tell yet. I think certainly all three are still very important. And I'm not sure that all the pressures that the space station people are going to have yet have come to bear. I think cost may even override with schedule being second and maybe performance going, oh, Henry, you might want to add something to that. No, I agree with that. I think one of the things that we've gotten into now is that lack of flexibility in cost. You know, Apollo, we never had enough money in Apollo, but we did have a lot more flexibility in how we can use it than we have now. Oh, yeah, in Apollo, I would say that if you had a problem in Apollo and you had a problem, you could go multi-pads to get the solution and then pick the solution you wanted. But you could carry multi-pads for a while. In the shuttle program and the arm program, I think what you had to do in that case was to pick the, not go parallel path, pick the solution you wanted. And you know, with good judgment and good decision making, I hope that decision was right, but not go parallel paths for that long. And I think that's one of the differences. In the shuttle program, you couldn't even continue a program. You had to start it and then you had to stop it because you had to take those funds and transfer them someplace else and pick up and get that one up to the even keel and then go back and pick up the other project and bring it along to keep everything going along on the even keel. And I think the program of the space station there, there's going to be a lot of pressures. And I think if you can keep those fundamentals I talked about in front of you, I think you can overcome those, the new pressures that might come about. One of the things that has been talked about a great deal recently is organizational cultures. How would you characterize the NASA and JSC's cultures? Have they changed? Do they need to change? Well, I think again there's some very fundamental things with culture. I think that at the Johnson Space Center, I think we have a culture that is, I don't know if you'd call it participant management, or there's certainly an interactive activity, interaction activity that takes place in making a decision. We have been left with the legacy that if you have an issue, that you have a concern, you feel free to express your concern. We weigh the problem, we work the problem, and if the answer may not always come out the way people want it, but you're explained what decision you make and you go on from there. I think that the only culture change that I see that may take place is maybe some external environment that says there are more external pressures in terms of overview committees. But even then, if you go back in the early days, we still had a lot of overview committees. So I'm not sure I see a big change except for the one fact at the Johnson Space Center is that we had previously had the one big program of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo. It would come up, then go away. Today we have shuttle, and it's going to be with us for a long time, and we've got space station that's going to be with us for a long time. And then if we go on to the Lunar Mars Initiative, that's going to be with us for a long time. So I think the culture is going to have to be able to accept and adapt to how you handle large multiple programs at the same time. Henry, do you have anything? Well, there's a couple of things that I see that has changed with time and is kind of changing back now. First one, we started out with Apollo. We had a few what I'd call mature people, and then we had a large number of people that's fresh out of college. When the shuttle program started, then we had that experienced team that went through the Apollo program. We learned an awful lot in Apollo program. And now as we start on space station, we're going to develop space station with a few mature people and a lot of young people again. So we're kind of moving back toward the type of organization that we had in there. Well, let me ask you, Joe, what do you think? You've been around. What's your feeling on that? Well, I think, as you pointed out, JSC developed a very unique kind of culture. Outside observers have characterized our decision making as being collegial and have had difficulty understanding why we seem to be able to do it. But I think it's because we've dealt with issues that are very complex, very technical, and in which no one person had all the technical expertise to make a decision. So there was always this collegial discussion, and then the program manager, because he was the appointed decision maker, made the decision. Well, that's a good point. I'm glad you brought that up. The program manager is like the board, the chairman of the board. He has 51% of the vote, and I think that is the important thing, that the program manager has to recognize that responsibility, and you do have to give him 51% of the vote. Erin, one of the things that might be interesting to discuss is why JSC uses a matrix management system. It was fashionable when we were formed in the 60s. It's no longer so fashionable in industry, but we still use it. Well, I think there's several reasons why you basically use a matrix management. You use a matrix management for one reason is if you want a good check and balance on the program. That's one reason why you use it. In fact, I would say that was the reason why we originally used it, was because we wanted to have a check and balance of the various parts of the institution on the program, and that is a very good attribute to have. The other reason why I use a matrix management is because you have multiple programs, and that's the way you handle multiple programs is going to matrix management. Now we're going into multiple programs, so we're going to have to use matrix management for that reason, but the original reason was more for the check and balance. There are some disadvantages, as you know, of matrix management. You don't have the autonomy. The program doesn't have the complete autonomy. As a project manager, I've got to admit, sometimes I was very frustrated with that, but I've got to tell you that as a project manager, I learned to love it because you do have that check and balance, and I think that check and balance is important. Of course, at the Johnson Space Center, I think there's another reason why it could be very difficult for us to eliminate the matrix management, even though some places are getting away from it, is because we have the very intricate interweaving of our operations activity with our design activity, and I think that is probably the only way you're going to be really able to do that is with the matrix management system here at the Johnson Space Center. But I'm not sure that fits all organizations or companies today. Oh, Henry, you have? Yeah, I think, you know, in our situation, matrix management gives us a great deal of more flexibility to use the expertise that you have when you don't have a great deal of depth. You can use the experts on a lot of different programs. You can use them this week on this program, next week on this program, and next month on that program over there as problems arise in each one of those programs that usually don't happen at the same time. And I think there's another message here about management, that any organization can work so long as it's the will of the people and the will of all of the people to want it to work. And I think that's one of the key ingredients to making an organization work. The best organization in the world will not work if the people don't want it to work. And I think that's one of the things that we've been able to do here is to keep everybody with a sense of responsibility, a sense to want to do the job of feeling responsible for making the hardware work. And that's been a key ingredient to making matrix management work here at this center. Joe, I'd like to hear again, I'd like to hear what you have to say because I know you studied management systems for some time and I'd like to hear what you have to say about that. Well, I think that as a government organization responsible for the initiation and the continuing management of programs, we do not have as narrow and sharp a focus as you can create in a business enterprise. And I think the complexity of our task forces us into a matrix management. Well, that's the operations element that I was talking about. Yes. In the context then of this management structure, how would you deal with the various elements of cost, schedule, and performance as they are embodied in the various functional elements that work with you? Well, of course, you hit the key of the whole program management theme of the balance of performance cost and schedule. That is a continuing trade. And that is the, you might say, that is the life a project or program manager lives with from the conception of the program to its end. It's a continuing trade off. And you can never solve, you can never make everybody happy you will never make everybody happy with those three elements. That's a continuing trade off. You know, I used to use a very simple analogy when I used to work with people they'd come to my office and I'd say, okay, now what I want you to do is help me. I would like you to play like for a moment that you're in business for yourself and you can't afford to produce a bad product. So you want to improve it. On the other hand, you're in business to make a profit, and you can't afford to put all this money into it. Now, help me figure out how to do that, how to get that product out on time. So I really think it boils down to that. The one thing that I think you can't afford to do in the man program, and I think it's true in the in the unmanned programs too, is you can't afford a failure. Failures are very expensive. And so the safety and reliability and quality has got to be maintained in that. And so and there's ways to do that. And you can still balance off those three parameters and still get a very high quality, high quality product, reliable product and safe product. So it is a tough job. And there is no closed form solution. There is by there, let me believe me, there is no closed form solution to to that trade off. It is a continuing, continuing trade of those three parameters. We've talked a good bit about engineering. Could you talk a little bit about how you use your program control and your business analysis people? Yeah, let me do that. And let me do that in the context of a term I call avoiding pitfalls. If you go back and you look at the history of program managers and project managers, the first pitfall, the first thing that happens is when you become a project manager, you have euphoria.  In fact, my wife used to say the greatest thing that happened during the day became the Orbiter Project Manager, and then on it was really tough. But it is the euphoria you become. But then you got to avoid the pitfalls. And the first pitfall you really have as a project manager is normally cost overruns. That's the first thing you normally see is cost overruns. The second problem a project manager, a pitfall the project manager has is scheduled. And then normally you'll solve the cost problem by either replacing the project manager or somebody figuring out how to do it and then the schedule is the problem you have to run into. And then of course it becomes the performance problems and getting it done and getting a good product. But getting back to your specific question, I think in that context the project control is the important element in helping you avoid those pitfalls. You need to use your contract as a good tool. You need to have the project control office help you manage that contract. You need to have a good configuration control. You need to be able to have them give you a good budget estimate, keeping up with your schedules. And if you do that, give you that insight, those are the ways, over and above the technical as you pointed out, those are the ways that you could potentially, you have the best chance of avoiding those pitfalls. And I think it's an extremely important element of it. Engineering is good and is important. But believe me, the business management end of a program is vitally important to the success of a program. Henry, perhaps you and Erin could speak to the subject of what should be the proper relationship between the government engineering organization and program management organization and its contractors. Yeah, but could I come back to the last question for just a minute on program control? Sure. You know, one of the things that you find about engineers is that engineers for some reason do not like to deal with budgets. They do not like to deal with costs. They'll deal with schedules fairly well, but they don't like to deal with budgets and costs and frequently don't keep track of the effort that's being produced per length of time that they're working on it and their cost will get out of hand. And I think that's one of the key areas where a good program control office comes into play is they tend to keep the schedule, the budget, and the balance of the program in proper focus. Okay. Do you want me to take a shot? Let me answer that other question because I've been thinking about it while you. I think if you go back to the Apollo 204 fire and this thing always sticks in my mind, there was a statement in the report that said that, and I'll paraphrase that in doing spaceflight, human spaceflight, you have to overcome a hostile external environment and to overcome a hostile external environment, you need teamwork. So I think that's the thing. You need a teamwork between the contractor and the government. I don't think there's any question about that that you need teamwork. On the other hand, you need to have a plan, an implementation plan that you can award the contractor when he does a good job, but you also need to penalize the contractor when he does a bad job. So I do think you need teamwork and to get a good, safe, reliable, efficient product, but you do need a way to penalize him when he doesn't do a good job and award him when he does a good job. Yeah, the only thing I could add to that here would be that you both need a good understanding of the product that you're going to produce. You know, you both need to be working toward the same game plan, and both parties need to understand that very, very clearly. And that's what you mean by teamwork. Yes, that's right. But you've got to have that. It's very, very critical. And also to the teamwork, I mean the fact that the way NASA operates, and I think that's typical at all centers, we do pride ourselves, and I think we justifiably so, that we do have a technical capability and technical excellence. And many times we have the technical capability because of our facilities, because of the way we have done things, that our technical capability, I think, and sometimes tends to be in selected areas greater than some of our contractors. In some areas our contractors have better technical capability than we have, and I think we need to know how to utilize both of those to full advantage. That's especially true, Erin, in those areas where we've had the opportunity to go through several programs in sequence, and then you've got another contractor that's a new owner on the street. Erin, how would you like to talk for a moment or two to the subject of the relationship between the program office and the institution of the center itself? Well, of course, with a matrix management system, they're very intertwined. You know, you can always argue, are the programs here for the institution or is the institution here to serve the program? And I think it's a little bit of both. I think that as we stated before, there is a support from the institution to the program. If you look at the Johnson Space Center specifically, we have basically an engineering organization under Henry, we have an operations organization and a science organization, and then we have the supporting functions. And those are all matrixed, you might say, support to the program manager. And as we said before, he gets inputs from that. There's a check and balance where the institution does support the program manager, but you do have to say that the program manager, you have to give somebody that rain and the program manager, if he fulfills the criteria, I said that we start off this discussion on, if he fulfills that criteria, he's justifiable having 51% of the vote and making the right decision. Henry? I think I could even make a stronger case for the 51% because if it was not for the programs, you would have little need for an institution because our total endeavor is in support of the projects or the programs at hand. And it's a matter of how you go about doing it. Well, that's right. Erin, it might be good to take a couple of cases in point. What was your most trying decision during Apollo? Well, there were a couple, Joe. And then I'd like to, you and Henry were there too. There was a couple. One, I remember very distinctly, which I probably learned one of my biggest lessons from was, I think the admission was Apollo 11, but I think it was. There was an inertial measurement unit that was a little bit out of spec, not much out of spec. And we were thrashing around whether we should remove that inertial measurement unit. And if you know, the lunar module was pretty flimsy, and I would say flimsy, but it didn't have a very hefty structure. It was on the stack, out on the pad. And we had to make a decision whether we should replace that inertial measurement unit or should we live with it. And we went to, we talked about it a long time. We went to George Low and we really recommended, gave him all the data, but we came up with a recommendation that says, we really should not change that IMU out, the inertial measurement unit out. There's a risk in doing it. We can live with it. And he thought for a moment and looked at us. He said, if we can remove that issue from the equation, we ought to go change it out. So I want to go change the IMU out. So that was a good point. That was a good lesson that I learned and always keeping the back of my mind. The other one was one, I think it was, I don't know if it was Henry or one of his people in the propulsion area that came to me. And that was on Apollo 8, where we had this issue on the injector of the SPS engine, where we found that that's a long story. We found that if you fired the injector dry with both banks of the engine that you could have a detonation and essentially cause a pressure spike and damage the chamber. And I have one of Henry's guys, or Henry bought it to me. And here we ready to fly Apollo 8 to the moon, first time we ever left the Earth's gravity going to the moon. And the way we were going to do it is we were going to fire both banks of those engines when we got into lunar orbit so we could be sure we got into a good burn. And that could have been a bad, that's the way the process was set up. So these guys brought that to me. And I got pretty excited about it. Here was the 11th hour and I had to figure out, but they came to me with a solution. They said, what you could do is you could fire on the way out, you could fire out of plane, just wet the bank with one engine and as you go fire the other bank with the other engine, get back in plane, not destroy your free return trajectory and have both banks wetted so you can fire both engines be safe. But I was the one who had to call George Low, tell him that, that at the Cape. And that was an interesting experience and I did that. But I think the message there was that, and I think there's a very key message there. And I think that's probably one of the most important lessons to learn. And that is that you should, a project manager, or a manager, should give the feeling to the people that he works with that they can bring him problems and they can bring him any kind of problem and that he's willing to understand that and work with them to a solution. And so that was a very healthy situation. I think if you can instill that type of feeling amongst all your people, I think you'll be very successful. Henry, how do you try to create that sense in your subsystem managers? You do it by giving them a feeling of responsibility. That it is their responsibility to make absolutely certain that their hardware is going to fail. It's going to work. If they feel like it's going to fail, it is their responsibility to bring it forward. And it's not always pleasant. One of the most difficult things sometimes is going to tell your boss something that you know your boss is not going to like. I can remember when this, excuse me, one night they called me at home about 11 o'clock at night and told me they had a pop in the command module when they were servicing RCS. And I was out there a few weeks before and the tanks were creaking and popping and I didn't think too much about it. But the next morning I walked in and told one of my engineers that they had a pop in the tank and he said, shoot, they pulled a standpipe in too. He says, I just ran those calculations last week. They pulled a standpipe in too. That was the one where we pulled the command module up. We didn't replace the tank on it. That wasn't the pleasant thing to have to go forward and tell somebody that we thought they pulled a standpipe in too with no way to get in there. Sure enough, they did. They pulled it in too. But that is a good, that's the right way to. I can give you another if you got just 10 seconds. Another good example. On the RCS tanks, they were made out of titanium 28 days into a 30-day test. One started leaking, very small leak. They cut that piece out, analyzed it, said it was caused by a fingerprint. That paper came across my desk. I looked at it. It looked fine. I signed it, sent it on its way, sent one of the engineers out to look at those tanks. He came back says, Henry, we can't let them get away with that. That was not a fingerprint. I said, why? He said he'd take a monkey to get in there, put his finger in there, make a long story short. We wouldn't put 10 tanks in test after much arguing over it, but he wouldn't give up. Every day he came in at least once. He says, Henry, we have to do something about that. That was not a random failure. And so finally I got the nerve to go forward and tell the program manager that we had a problem. And when I did, we got 10 tanks in test and 98 hours in the test, three of them blew up, just broke wide open. Of course, then you didn't have to worry about it anymore. We fixed it, but it is through his integrity and his concern and him not letting it die that kept us from having a problem on the first Apollo flight. And somehow that needs to be reinforced every day of every week. If you don't do your job and you don't do it good, the bird won't fly. And so I see that as one of our major jobs as managers, is to convince the people that we're working with every day that it's their responsibility to understand their hardware. And if they see something that they feel is not right, bring it forward and talk about it.   But you make every effort to convince them that you're right. We've taken some examples from Apollo. Do you have one or two similar cases in the shuttle program? Yes. Of course, the thing we didn't talk about, which I think is important, is decision making. And decision making is very important. And timely decision making is even more important. And by definition, by timely decision making, I don't really mean that you have to make a decision right away. It's got to be timed properly. Sometimes it's right away and sometimes you wait. And sometimes you don't always have all the information you need to make the decision, but sometimes you need to make the decision without all the information. And the fact that you've made a timely decision, the fact that you waited, you have a good chance to be right. A couple of items in the orbit program that come to mind. One was early in the program, we had to decide what type of landing system to use. And it was a technology issue, which we were going through in terms of what was the right technology to pick. And we were looking at that time back in the early part of the program, the 72-time period, whether we should go with the microwave landing system. Now that to make the decision today would be pretty straightforward. But in that time period, it was pretty hard to decide whether you should go with the microwave landing system. I didn't have all the information. You know, I didn't have it, but I thought it was timely to do it. And we, I didn't really want to pay the money to pick up all the technology development and take that risk. On the other hand, the performance looked awful good. So weighing that, I made the decision to go with the microwave landing system, and it turned out to be the right decision. We went with it. It's been very successful, and it's been one of our better systems. Another one is, we were arguing one evening about, that reversed on me. This one was a good decision. We were arguing one time about the number of structural test articles we needed, and my budget was pretty tight. And the engineering people came in and said, we needed, I forgot how many structural test articles, and I looked at the budget that it would cost to do that, and I said, no, we're going to cut five of them, three or four, five or something like that. And I made that decision. Now it turns out that it was a timely decision. They came back to me about two months later, and they really had a very good technical briefing of why technically, from a safety point of view, they really needed the added articles, and I put them back in the program and didn't hurt anything because I didn't make a timely decision, was able to pick up those added test articles. That ties in two things. One, the people weren't afraid to come back, as Henry pointed out, to tell you that you were wrong. And number two, I made a timely decision, which gave me time to fix the problem. So I think there's two ends of the spectrum. And I think, Erin, that's one thing that we have to be constantly balancing against a correct decision. You know, sometimes we can get in the trap or a mode of feeling like we might make a mistake. And a lot of times the greatest mistake of all is not making a decision. Well, I think that's right. And I do think the other thing is, I think you have to be able and be able to accept the criticism and the fact that you made a bad decision and reverse yourself if you have to. I think that's another important characteristic. We've talked right up until now about the details of managing a project, but both you and Henry have also managed line organizations. And I'd like you to comment on what you perceive as the differences in the management of a line organization versus a project. Well, there are a lot of similarities. There's no question there are a lot of similarities in managing a project and in managing a line organization. I think the biggest difference as I see, and I'd like to hear what you have to say in Henry after I finish, but I think the biggest difference I see in managing a line organization that it does take a lot more time with your people in a line organization, certainly a center director and certainly as a director of research and engineering than it does in managing a project. It takes a lot more time. You still have trade-offs as managing an institution versus managing a project. It's not as strong on cost and schedule and performance as much as it is on other parameters, but like parameters. So there's a lot of similarity and I think the fundamental, but I do go back to say to you that the fundamental way that we start off this discussion, the fundamental characteristics I think are about the same. Henry? I think you're right on here and the major difference that I see between being a project manager and being a director of a line organization is that you have the administrative responsibilities of your people in a line organization where generally a project manager spends very little time in the administrative responsibilities with their people. First off, they don't have a large number of people that they have to supervise directly. They have a lot of people that support them, but they don't have to worry about the administrative part of it. And that's a large part of trying to keep the spirit up, the can-be attitude up in an organization. And that responsibility follows largely on line organizations. What do you have to say about that? Well, I think Henry's point is the one that comes to my mind is that line organizations, management's primary responsibility is the development of their people. And the people are then used to support the programs. So it's much more of a paternal kind of management as opposed to objective achievement kind of management. What do you see to be the most significant issues that we're going to face in the next five to ten years? Well, I think as far as NASA is concerned, NASA specifically, I think we need to continue to maintain our technical excellence. I feel that we need to continue to bring on good people. We need to continue to train our good people. We need to give them the right working environment in terms of facilities, in terms of laboratories. We want to stay a technically proficient organization. And I think that's probably the fundamental thing for all NASA centers. We want to be sure they have the right capability to maintain their educational proficiency, their formal education. Whatever field it may be, I think that's important. I think we need to, as you and I personally have talked many times, I think we need to have successful programs. I think failures are very devastating and we need to be able to maintain the momentum, whether it's an unmanned program, whether it's a man program, we need to have successful programs and we need to minimize our risks, our failures. On the other hand, we can't be afraid to do something. We've got to be bold, we've got to be aggressive, so we can't let that shadow the way we do things. So I would say those are to me the most significant challenges that we have in the future. I guess the final point is with the advent of the thing I talked about before, multiple programs, large programs, things we'd like to do in the future, I think we need to become even more productive than we are, we have been in the past and that's in all areas. Henry, what do you see as the major issue? I agree with Aaron totally. There's two key areas. One is developing confidence and maintaining confidence in our people. You know, you have to have confidence in yourself, you have to be able to know where you're coming from in order to direct and manage a program and that takes time to develop, especially with the young people, I would say five, seven, eight years to develop that confidence in themselves and I think we've been blessed with that. I also think that we have to continue to look at more efficient ways and better ways of doing business to eliminate duplication. It is not possible for us to continue doing business the way we are and support all of the programs that's on the plate and do all the things that we are to be doing. You know, we're just now to the point of where we can make space a fun place to work and play in and there's a lot more work out there that needs to be done than we can get around to. So I see that as the two major areas that we have to work on. Aaron, what should young engineers or other professionals just starting out on their careers in NASA do to prepare themselves for positions in management? Well, I think first and foremost whatever their field is, as you pointed out, whether it be in the business management area, whether it be in the human resources area, or whether it be in the technical engineering science area, operations area, I think you need a good formal background. I think you cannot get away from a good formal background in education. I think that's extremely important. I think as we start off this discussion, I do think trying to get some early hands-on experience in a total systems aspect of a program is very beneficial and I think that ought to be in the hardware area if you can and even in the analysis area if you can or some type of hands-on experience whether it be in the engineering area, science area, operations area or even in as I said the human resource or business management area. I think it's very important to get hands on and start it from the ground up. So I think that's extremely important. And I think the other attributes, as I said before, the patience, the integrity, honesty and being able to communicate are really the attributes for a young person if he wants to make it happen, you might say, in a successful program management arena. Henry, would you want to comment on? I'm not too sure I can add a whole lot to what Aaron came up with. I usually can always find something to add to something. But that's the key things that you have to develop confidence in yourself and one way a person goes about doing that is being able to take a project and do it. So you get a feel for what it takes to do that job and then you get a feel for what it takes to do a little bit larger job and a little bit bigger job. And I'm a firm believer on a person starting out at the bottom in an organization and learning the trade and working the way up through the system. And I think it's those first years, the foundation that you get during those first few years that's extremely crucial to doing a good job, having the tools to do a good job down there. Let me tie you into this, Joe. You've been around a long time. You've seen it all happen. What's your take on it? Well, I think I'm a subscriber as you and Henry are to the early hands-on experience. And I think there's a reason for that in the sense that once you have become expert in something yourself, when you move into positions where you deal with subjects that you're not so knowledgeable about the content, you have learned how to recognize the work of an expert because it has characteristics or tool marks and it helps you in evaluating the decisions you have to make. We've talked about our relationships with the contractor and within the various elements within the center. One of the things that it might be worthwhile to talk to Aaron about program management as we're doing it in the station is our relationships with our headquarters and our sister centers. Well, I think that's a good point. I'm really glad you addressed that. I think it gets back to really what I said before, an item I said before is teamwork. There's no question that teamwork is really the element, I guess an underlying element of all success. I think we've got to have teamwork with our centers within NASA and we certainly have to support the program directors and the associate administrators and headquarters because they are really the people that are setting the stage for the whole program and I think we need to have teamwork with them and for them and with the centers. I think that's extremely important. And I think I've seen that come a long way. I think we have come a long way in that regard. I think we all recognize that's going to be the element of success of both our man programs and our unmanned programs and I think we're demonstrating that more and more every day with the leadership we have of the center directors and the associate administrators and with the administrator and deputy administrator. So I think it's extremely important. Henry, how do you see the relationship amongst the various directors of engineering at the centers? I don't know quite how to answer that because I don't know how it used to be that good. But I tend to agree with Aaron that the thing that we have to have is honesty, integrity, teamwork. You know, you've got to have those three and you've got to have sincere desire to try to do what is right for the program.  And as long as we can keep our focus on trying to figure out what is really the best thing to do and get on and do it and make a decision, you know, I think that's one of the most important things that we can do. Aaron, I think we've covered most of the points that come to my mind as to what one should address in program and project management, but perhaps you would like to summarize what you think of as the key tools that the manager has to achieve his objectives? Well, the one thing that a manager doesn't like, or two things a manager doesn't like, one is a surprise and the other is a failure. And that surprise could be in the budget area, the schedule area, or the performance area, and the same thing with the failure, whether it be a test failure or whether it be something more significant. So I think that with those underlying issues, those underlying stipulations, I think you have to have the intelligence and the staying power, you might say, which is what I would say is almost a 24-hour-day, seven-day-a-week job to keep on top of those parameters so that you don't get surprised, you don't have a failure, and it's just by working the details, have people that are willing to bring you that information and have people that are willing to help you make those decisions, whether it be your own people or your contractors that help you make those decisions. So I think if you can set that type of work, if you can put that type of energy into it, and you can get that type of people around you, not have yes people around you, but have people that will bring you the problems and bring you the potential solutions, I think you've got a very, very high probability of avoiding the pitfalls of the type of things that would cause you to fail. Henry, do you have any further comment? Program manager's got to be tough as nails. I mean, you've got to not feel intimidated or not let the system overwhelm you. There's lots of decisions that are tough, tough decisions, decisions that's going to make absolutely no one happy, that has to be made in a timely fashion, and it takes someone with a great deal of fortitude to be able to make those decisions and make them in a timely, decisive kind of a way. And I think that's one of the most important ingredients that a project manager has to have that tends to differentiate a project manager from a director of engineering or division chief or some of those other kinds of jobs. There's lots of unpopular decisions that has to be made and someone has to make it and that decision generally falls on the project manager. For our last observation, Aaron, I'd like to address, you to address the question that says we're losing the generation that has had this experience of Mercury, Gemini, Skylab, Apollo, Shuttle, and some people express a concern as to whether we will have the management capability and depth as we go into the future. Well, I think we are losing, we have lost a lot of people in that regard. The time has caught up with us in that regard or time has caught up with some of the people. On the other hand, I really think from a more positive point of view, I think that we do still have a lot of people around, good people around. We do have education programs. We do recognize, I think, the key elements of good program management and the key elements that are going to require a person to have the tools to be a good program manager or a good engineer or a good scientist or business management. I think we recognize those. And I would say this, I would say that the people that I see, the young men and women coming out of the universities today, I'm pretty high on them. I look at what some of the young people we've hired and we're hiring quite a few, as I'm sure all centers are. I think I have no question in my mind, I really have no question in my mind that they will be able to step up to the challenge of the large new programs that I hope that we're working on that will come to pass in the future, which I think will come to pass in the future. And I just have no question in my mind that we're going to have the right people. We've got the right attitude. We've got the right leadership. All the centers feel that way. So I just, I feel that if we keep going down the path we're going with the emphasis we have that we'll have the capability to do the big programs in the future. Henry, would you like to comment? I didn't agree with Aaron 100%. I think we need to remember that we went to the moon with a young team of people. You know, we had a few experienced people and a lot of kids out there and not a one of them let us down. The ones that we're getting today are the country's finest. You know, they're much better educated than we were. They have a much better foundation to start out. They work just as hard. They have the same kind of worth ethic that we had. And I think when the time comes for them to take over this responsibility, they will not let the country down. I'm confident of that. I don't think you can give them too much responsibility too quick right now. Aaron. Henry. Thank you very much. And this concludes this discussion of program and project management in a manned spaceflight program setting. Thank you. Thank you and goodbye.