In 1990, after eight years leading the Hubble Space Telescope development, Charlie Pellerin’s team launched the world’s most anticipated telescope.

However, the Hubble telescope had a flawed mirror, and was useless. When Charlie thought things couldn’t get any worse, the Failure Review Board reported the root cause was a ‘leadership failure’. 

Charlie was the leader of the Hubble team, and after they mounted Hubble’s space repair mission, they became a classic case study for business communication – they became dedicated to developing what are considered by many as the most effective team building and risk mitigation processes in the world.

Hi Charles, how did your team building and risk mitigation processes come about?

After this catastrophe it was essential to improve communication, performance, and low morale among NASA’s technical teams, so I developed the teambuilding “4-D process". It’s an approach that‘s proven, quantitative, and requires only a fraction of the time and resources of traditional training methods. 

This 4-D process has boosted team performance in hundreds of NASA project teams, engineering teams, and management teams, including the people responsible for NASA’s most complex systems – the Space Shuttle, space telescopes, robots on Mars, and the mission back to the moon.

How does the 4-D process apply to business?

The 4-D process uses extensive, real-world examples, providing deep insight into team performance and risk mitigation. Team members’ performances will be enhanced, the team’s risk will be lowered, leadership will be developed, and the outcome for the organisation will be superior business performance. 

Will any type or size of businesses be able to easily implement the processes and benefit from them?

People are using the 4-D processes with quantitative results in 75 countries. Users include the world’s largest nuclear activity, Electricity de France, mines in Malaysia, banks in Australia, and by more than 100,000 people in China as many companies have adopted these processes.

It can be applied in any organisation, and includes a fast, free online behavioral assessment.

What benefits will be gained from implementing the 4-D processes?

Put simply, it will:

  • help individual team members understand each other 

  • measure the key drivers of team performance in the social context

  • analyze the characteristics of team performance into actionable elements 

  • identify your teammates' innate personalities

  • diagram your organisational culture (and compare it to your customer's)

  • measure the coherency of your project's paradigm (get this wrong and you will be fired) 

  • assist in learning to meet people's need to feel valued by you

  • influence the outcome of any difficult situation with the Context Shifting Worksheet.

How does this process work?

Begin with a ‘4-D ready’ team, a group of five to 20 people, and a single supervisor, who have worked together enough to define common behavioural norms. 

Go to my website, 4-dsystems, log-in and get your Assessment or Accelerator Dashboard. Enter team members’ email addresses, the team leader’s e-mail addresses, and launch your Team Development Assessment or Accelerator (TDA). There are three reasons for doing this:

1. The online activity powerfully stimulates behavioural improvement.

2. You benchmark your team’s performance against ‘peer’ teams

3. You establish the starting point to track future progress. 

While you can adjust many parameters, the defaults work for most – a two-week span with participation reports every several days. Also, provide each participant a copy of my book, How NASA Builds Teams. 

When participation is adequate, go to your Dashboard and generate your TDA report.

What tangible outcomes will come out of the report?

Your team leader should set aside 60 to 90 minutes to process the report with the team members. Here are some of the outcomes:

  • Participation Report: who completed, who didn’t, and who ‘opted out’.

  • Team Score and the Benchmarking Scale displaying your team’s performance, along with all previous measurements with the same email identifier.

  • Anonymous Distribution of Participants’ Perception, useful for identifying ‘out-of-family’ members.

  • Relative Ranking of Behaviours, comparing each of the eight scores including most recent previous assessment.

  • Display of each of the Eight Behaviours, with rationale for measuring the behaviour, Repetition of the Standard used to measure the behaviour, benchmarking of the behaviour, average over all the behaviours, and participant’s comments about the behaviour (randomly resorted for each behaviour).

  • The “Plus” Question – attributes of our team that support good teamwork.

  • The “Delta” Question – actions we could take to improve our team’s performance.

  • The “Unacknowledged Realities” that are limiting team performance.

What is the team leader’s role?

The team leader then supports the team in making these decisions:

  • What behaviour-enhancing actions can we implement in our workplace?

  • Are we a ‘bottom-quintile’ team? If so, engage consulting help based on the Seven Deadly Sins described in How NASA Builds Teams.

  • Do we want to use Individual Development Assessments or Accelerators (with coaching) for key team members?

  • Do we want a multi-day workshop or individual behaviour? 

  • Most importantly, schedule and announce the next TDA as it begins working from then on.

Dr Charles Pellerin is the recipient of two Outstanding Leadership Medals by NASA, an honour bestowed on less than 50 people (including astronauts) in NASA’s history. Dr Pellerin has retired from NASA and now runs a leadership consulting firm.