Leading into the Unknown: Inspiring the Impossible with NASA’s Holly Ridings

This week on World Reimagined, we spoke with NASA’s Chief Flight Director, Holly Ridings, about how to build and inspire strong teams and what it takes to lead under pressure. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to the full-length version here.

Leaders can’t surpass the achievements of the past by sticking to the ways of the past. They must continuously challenge the status quo to inspire teams to break new ground and achieve new possibilities. Few organizations embody this approach to leadership as well as NASA.

In this episode, Host Gautam Mukunda speaks with NASA’s Chief Flight Director, Holly Ridings about how to build a diverse culture of collaboration, innovation and disruption. She also discusses how to lead through insurmountable challenges and inspire teams to reach new heights. Holly was the lead flight director for Expedition 16 and SpaceX Dragon. In her current role, she is responsible for the safety and success of human spaceflight at NASA .  

Follow @GMukunda on Twitter or email us at WorldReimagined@nasdaq.com

Literature Referenced on World Reimagined Season 2 Episode 9:

The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe

Columbia Accident Investigation Report

Guest Information for Intuitive Leadership:

Holly Ridings is the Chief Flight Director at NASA. Holly started her NASA career as an ISS flight controller in the THOR (Thermal Operations and Resources Group).

Holly has served as Lead Flight Director for Expedition 16, STS-127, and the first SpaceX Dragon mission to ISS.  As the Expedition 16 lead, Holly was responsible for the ISS crew during STS-120, STS-122, STS-123, and the first ATV mission.  Expedition 16 also conducted 5 non-Shuttle EVAs primarily for PMA2 ISS construction and recovery from a Solar array failure.  As the STS-127 lead, Holly was responsible for the addition of the Japanese Exposed Facility and the External Platform to the ISS over the course of a 16 day mission that included 5 EVAs. 

As the NASA lead for the Dragon Demo mission to ISS, Holly was responsible for the safety of ISS and the ISS crew during the arrival of the first commercial vehicle at ISS including the final decision for rendezvous and capture.  Holly served as the Flight Director Office Assistant for ISS and Visiting Vehicles before selection as the Deputy Chief of the Flight Director Office in the fall of 2014.  Prior to being selected as a Flight Director, Holly was the lead for the ISS ADCO (Attitude Determination and Control) group.                                            

She has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M, and lives in Texas with her husband and son.

Episode Transcript:

Gautam Mukunda:

It's tough enough to have responsibilities that cover the planet. You're about to meet a leader whose mandate extends from the earth to the moon and back.

Speaker 2:

I think of it is trying to create a new world. The kind of world that we perhaps have always wanted to live in.

Speaker 3:

Climate change is a systemic risk to the entire economy. You cannot diversify away from it.

Speaker 4:

To intervene when your country, your company, your family need you to do so, that's leadership character.

Intro:

World Reimagined, with Gautam Mukunda, a leadership podcast for a changing world. An original podcast from NASDAQ.

Speaker 6:

Why do leaders fail? Unwillingness to learn, a fear of showing their vulnerability and a fear of being themselves, lack of authenticity.

Speaker 7:

Character of a corporation is not the personality, character of a corporation is the integrity and the morality of the company.

Speaker 8:

So without truth and trust, there is no democracy.

Holly Ridings:

My origin story, I was in the sixth grade. I grew up in a relatively small town in Texas, in the panhandle, so Amarillo, Texas. In that timeframe, and this is the '80s, you would go to watch things in the cafeteria. And so I'm in the sixth grade and they would take us down to the cafeteria to wash the space shuttle launches live. And if you can imagine, they had these TVs on those big stands, they'd roll them in, and they'd sit in the front and you're all spaced out in the cafeteria.

Speaker 10:

Three, two, one. And liftoff. Liftoff for the 25th space shuttle mission. And it has cleared the tower.

Holly Ridings:

For Challenger, we all file into the elementary school cafeteria and we're all sitting there watching the TV. And of course, Challenger explosion and the entire crew was killed on assent of the vehicle. And to my sixth-grade brain, I didn't quite know what was going on. You understood that the crew had died, that something really bad had happened. You watched it live and everybody's seen the iconic footage, but what's interesting is a lot of people, that made them really scared of spaceflight. And it is, it's risky, it's scary. It's very hard to accomplish.

Holly Ridings:

But for me, I wanted to figure out how to solve the problem. And so there was the seed in my brain of, "How can I make that better? What can I do to help? What can I do to make sure that never happens?"

Gautam Mukunda:

The girl in that cafeteria was Holly Ridings. She went on to get her bachelor's in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M. In 1998, she joined NASA. She became the lead flight director for Expedition 16 and SpaceX Dragon. And in 2018, she was named chief flight director, meaning every single American space mission and the life of every American astronaut is her responsibility.

Holly Ridings:

Now, much later in life, I've realized I run towards problems, but again, at that time, I didn't really realize it. And so to me, having watched that event live just left this impression in my brain about solving problems and helping and just trying to make the world a better place. And so I've been pursuing that goal ever since.

Gautam Mukunda:

Someone who looks at the Challenger disaster and decides to spend her life running towards that explosion isn't going to be drawn in by small problems, no, Holly Ridings is going to take America and the human race back to the moon. And to do that, she's going to lead teams of the world's best and brightest scientists and engineers to solve impossibly complex problems under the highest pressure imaginable.

Gautam Mukunda:

For someone who is so drawn to solving problems, what's the problem you're trying to solve right now?

Holly Ridings:

The problem we're trying to solve right now? There's lots of them, but just to pick one, getting back to the moon, and then we're able to hand it off and move forward and make it sustainable and a jumping off point, for hopefully, Mars and on out into the solar system. So that's me personally. There are so many things going on at NASA in human spaceflight around the world to be excited about, but that's the one that is both super challenging because I've not done that in my career yet, and I think inspiring not only now, but way many, many years into the future.

Gautam Mukunda:

Holly, we first landed on the moon in 1969, and nobody at that moment in time would have guessed that they would be almost 50 years before we took another shot. When you're speaking to people less bought into space travel than me, I guess, what's the story you tell them as to why we need to do this again?

Holly Ridings:

If you think about exactly what you said, it's been a long time since we've been to the moon. So talking about landing, the first woman, the next man, and really the work and the energy globally that needs to be behind that in order for us to do it. So there's so many positives. If you go back to my origin story, that was a tragedy that inspired me to work in space, but just at a very basic level to have an amazing accomplishment, a positive one that inspires the world. When we launched our first commercial crew flight, 10 million plus people watched it live. People are looking for things to be excited about. So to give the world a positive thing like landing on the moon to inspire the next generation.

Holly Ridings:

So that that's the touchy-feely answer. But there's also all of the technology involved, all of the teamwork involved in order to make the technology work together, all of the science, the things that we can learn, not only about ourselves as humans, but about the environment that we're surrounded by, the space environment on earth. So to me, I try to explain it first from a can-feel-it-in-your-heart standpoint, because that's what I truly believe, but also from the benefit of the human race, having a goal where we can work together, which really don't think should be discounted at this point, people need to rally around something that we can do together as a human race.

Holly Ridings:

And also then from a science and technology advancement. Flying in spaces is challenging, it really pushes the envelope, it disrupts your thinking and you have creative and new ideas that have far reaching applications, as we've seen for the past 40 years of human spaceflight.

Gautam Mukunda:

There are about an infinite number of things I could key off of what you just said, Holly, but let me start with the teamwork part, because I guess we are a leadership podcast, not a space podcast. I'd like it to be a space podcast, but-

Holly Ridings:

We can do both, absolutely. Let's do both.

Gautam Mukunda:

There may be no more iconic imagery of team leadership for Americans then the NASA's flight director. Honestly, I would say you're right up there with the quarterback of a Super Bowl team. If you were to describe your philosophy of leading a team, what is it?

Holly Ridings:

I'm trying to figure out, like you said, how to key off of that, my two favorite things, space and leadership. So how do we talk about that in just one hour or so? My philosophy, first and foremost, is relationships. I think that when you do something as difficult as human spaceflight, and you mentioned a quarterback of an NFL team, all teams work better when they have good relationships. Now, that doesn't necessarily always mean you've known somebody for the last 20 years of your life, building a meaningful relationship to accomplish a challenging goal is a specific skill.

Holly Ridings:

And you and I could meet each other for five minutes and go accomplish something challenging if we understood our roles, our responsibilities, our expectations.

Gautam Mukunda:

So how do you think about building these relationships and creating this trust that you're trying to cultivate?

Holly Ridings:

I think it's changed a lot over time. When I was younger, you start out trying to know everything, people are going to want to know you and have a relationship with you, the smartest person in the room. But I've always been a team person. I grew up playing team sports, and so there was always a part of me that even though you think as a young engineer you've got to be the smartest person in the room and that's the most important, in the back of my mind, I always understood, maybe there's more to it than that.

Holly Ridings:

And so I think relationships are a lot about listening, especially where I am as the chief flight director. You could take the approach where you are telling people what to do all the time, but you also could take the approach that you're leading this team of amazing people. And so listening to their ideas and their input makes a big, big difference in terms of their buy-in and how things get done. So I was lucky enough to meet Chris Kraft and spend some time with him. He lived locally in the area.

Holly Ridings:

If you don't know who Chris Kraft is, he was the very first NASA flight director. For reference, I'm number 62. There's not very many flight directors, as you mentioned, iconic. So I was lucky enough to spend some time with Chris Kraft before he passed away a few years ago. And I asked him for advice, and he said, "Well, Holly, there's more than one way to get to Spring, Texas." I live on the south side of Houston, Spring, Texas is on the north side of Houston, and I'm looking at him like, "What does he mean by that?"

Holly Ridings:

But if you think about it, you take out your app on your phone and you map, it gives you like three or four choices for wherever you're trying to go. And so the lesson was really, you set the direction, you set the goal, and then let your team really figure out the best way to get there. Sure, I could dictate, "Take path A instead of path C," but often, if you can listen and you have the patience and he can create the time for them and give them permission, even in a time-critical, quick decision making, you can still create some space for them to have a few minutes to think through it and then pick which path and communicate to you what they think is best.

Holly Ridings:

And so when you talk about relationships, doing all of those things have a tremendous impact on the team.

Gautam Mukunda:

Wow. I want to go there because I'm... When we think of decisions, there's things under pressure, there's this time commitment.It seems to me like you have a very deliberate sense of like, "No, I need to give people time. I need to push back against that time pressure to give them space to actually make the best choices."

Holly Ridings:

The answer is definitely yes. And then I'll follow that with, it's also very hard to do. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline. When you're doing your planning for a mission, it's not too difficult. You have meetings, you do simulations, all kinds of things to get ready. But in the moment when you're sitting in mission control, I always joke when I'm mentoring new people that I have this clock running in my head. It's almost like, again, imagine if you run a lot of apps yourself and your brain, one of my apps in my head is I can always say what time it is without a clock, without a watch.

Holly Ridings:

I have a clock running in my head from years, I think, of sitting in mission control and watching the clock and knowing how long you have to make a decision, whether that's a minute or five minutes or three hours or two days. And so you have to set the boundary. Even if you have only a minute to make a decision, you can still tell your team, "We've got one minute, I want the best you've got." As opposed to, "We've got one minute, we're going to do this." Now, don't get me wrong, there are some days when as the leader, the chief flight director, you have to just say, "We're going this way, and this is what we're going to do."

Holly Ridings:

So you need that skill and you employ it and make that happen when you think it's necessary. But to give your team space requires a lot of discipline, not to just jump in and make all the decisions. You don't want to be pulling your team with you, dragging them behind you like a big sack, you want them to be coming with you as you're going, especially when you're having to do a lot of challenging decisions about risk. There's no good answer, there's no clean answer. Each answer has it own ups and downs.

Gautam Mukunda:

Since NASA was founded in 1958, Holly is the first woman ever to be NASA, chief flight director. She's had to challenge old leadership orthodoxies to ensure that NASA will be as iconic in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.

Gautam Mukunda:

When I was learning about NASA growing up and about your job, the phrase that I heard was, flight is God. But you're describing a noticeably non-hierarchic approach to your role while keeping in reserve this ability to be like, "No, at the end of the day, we're going to do this," because that's the decision you have to make. One is, how did you think about actually changing the culture to make it a more collaborative one? And two, in the process of doing that, still maintaining that ability to be like, "Nope, I have to make a snap decision, and we're just going to do it."

Holly Ridings:

It's interesting. When I first got picked as a flight director, I had one of the flight directors at the time who's since retired from the role standing in mission control. And then he points at the sign, the flight director sign sitting on top of the shelf where you sit in mission control. And he said, "That sign says flight director, not flight suggester," kind of thing. And so there's definitely a lot of what you talk about in terms of flight is God. It's interesting, you absolutely need structure in order to perform under pressure because it has to be really fast.

Holly Ridings:

So everyone has to know their roles, there can't be any ambiguity. So if you take an emergency procedure, if the alarm goes off, there's someone in the room that makes the call, "We are in procedure XYZ, in step A, B, C. Go." And then the CapCom, that's the capsule communicator, so the person who typically talks to the crew from mission control, they call up and they have set things that they say. And so you absolutely need that structure. And that hierarchy to handle really bad things really, really fast. But if you consider where we are with human spaceflight, where we're doing a lot of development, so we flew the first crude SpaceX Dragon mission, again, I mentioned last summer.

Holly Ridings:

We've since launched two more of those. And so along with the strict hierarchy where everyone knows their roles, you have to leave, again, this space, and you can almost think about it as physical space, but space to understand problems that you don't know are going to happen. An emergency procedure, like if there is a fire on the space station, that is a very specific application. An emergency procedure that's I actually don't know what the vehicle's doing because I've never flown this vehicle in space before, that is a little bit more of a fluid discussion.

Holly Ridings:

So I also think a little bit of the flight is God is the public persona. And internally, it's always been a little bit of this fluidity where you're solving these unknown problems.

Gautam Mukunda:

So those are two very distinct sets of skillsets. How do you identify someone who has both?

Holly Ridings:

So you said your two favorite things, or at least two things you liked were spacing and leadership, I'd say mine as well. The first half of my career was pretty focused on space, and since I got this job as the chief flight director, I think my interest in really leadership and the skills has grown. And so for me personally, it's been a journey the last few years as the chief flight director. I spent three and a half years in trying to find ways for myself to see it in a different light. So let me explain that.

Holly Ridings:

When you want to do development of yourself, of your team, there's different ways you can do it. You can send them to classes, you can send them to conferences. But what I have really found is try to find other people like us who are trying to solve similar problems. So you think about firefighters, they run into burning buildings. And so you have to have someone who can absolutely run into a burning building and fight the fire, but they also have to coordinate the fire, they have to talk to the humans that they're trying to save, that type of thing.

Holly Ridings:

So firefighters and special operations. I talked to the National Forest Service not long ago about how they're trying to find people. And so it's been a journey to try to take the, "I know what it looks like," and turn it into something that you could hire for. And I'll tell you, one of the biggest ones is an adaptability, how much are you sort of married to how you are and what you believe today, and how much can you actually change as you get new information? And so, again, back to the control center, you want people who can look you in the eye and say, "We absolutely need to do this right now to save the crew, to save the vehicle."

Holly Ridings:

But in the next breath, they need to be able to look you in the eye and say, "I'm seeing some information, some data on my screen, and I actually don't know what it means." And those are just very opposite. So trying to find other people who are solving the same problem and really talk through it and maybe pull out traits. So things like adaptability, flexibility of thought. Engineering, not always known for flexibility of thought, and most people who do this job have engineering backgrounds. Communication is a big one. That's a giant overused word because, what type of communication are you looking for?

Holly Ridings:

We have to be able to really understand then talk about technical stuff pretty quickly, boil it down. The other piece is really this relationship that we hit on earlier that is getting along in the world because we have all these new partners, again, countries, companies, and they all have different objectives. And so there's a human element that wasn't maybe as much focused several years ago when we were just flying spaceships. But now it's, in some ways, expanding beyond just flying spaceships. So really that savviness with people, that adaptability and really the flexibility that goes with it, are the traits.

Holly Ridings:

Now, then of course, you got to figure out how to test for them in some type of interview process, but we can talk about that for a couple hours too.

Gautam Mukunda:

If you're interested in leadership, Holly, there's this podcast I would recommend to you.

Holly Ridings:

Yeah, I know. I might've met that guy.

Gautam Mukunda:

When NASA took us to the moon, it was mostly, although, as the book and movie, Hidden Figures reminded us, not entirely made up of white male engineers and test pilots. NASA's next great endeavor is the Artemis Project, named after Apollo's twin sister. Artemis will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon. And it will take us there to stay not just visit. But the NASA that will go to the moon in the 21st century has to be very different from the one that did it and the 20th. So I wanted to know, how does Holly think about blazing new paths, in science and in her own career?

Gautam Mukunda:

When Tom Wolfe wrote The Right Stuff and NASA first achieved its iconic status, NASA teams were white, male engineers and test pilots, who usually were also engineers. Now, you work with teams of global diversity, not just Americans, but people from all over the world. You've expressed, I believe, that it's important to you to bring that into NASA as well, to help with that. I'll note that my mother, who has spent her entire career working with NASA, once told me that she had never been in a meeting where there was another woman who was anything but a secretary in her entire career from beginning to end.

Holly Ridings:

Wow.

Gautam Mukunda:

So, what do you see as both the challenges and opportunities of the world that NASA inhabits now where both internally and externally, you said you're working with Russians and people from Japan on a routine basis?

Holly Ridings:

First of all, your mother sounds amazing. I was lucky enough to come to NASA after that time period. So when I started, 1998 or so, in my mind, there was already some diversity, I didn't look around and was always the only female. There were some days, but not quite to the extreme that you were talking about. So I will tell you that NASA overall tremendous focus on diversity of all kinds. So there's ethnic diversity, there's gender diversity, there's diversity of technical backgrounds and knowledge. And so the time that I have spent 20-plus years at NASA, it has always been a focus to improve it, conscientious about it.

Holly Ridings:

And so, for me, the question is, those are big generic words, like what's actionable? In operations, we like actions, what can you do? And so having had the opportunity to hire flight directors and the opportunity to be the chief flight director and the first female, I've learned a lot. One of the things I've learned that it definitely did not put enough stock in that representation matters. It freely does. So me coming up through the system, people were always absolutely positive.

Holly Ridings:

I was just working hard. It never really occurred to me I'm a female doing this. I was just doing this, just working hard, trying to be relevant, trying to make a difference, learn something, have fun. Those are my basic high-level principles. But then when I got in this job, you get it reflected back at you, "You're the first female chief flight director," over and over. And you consider, what does that mean? Why is that important? And representation really, really matters. Not only am I a female, but I'm also a mother, which I've also realized makes a big difference in terms of representation.

Holly Ridings:

And so trying to convince people of any kind that they can do this, they need encouragement, they need permission, they need mentoring, they need to look at someone and see themselves. And I've really only come to understand the importance of that from a hiring perspective.

Gautam Mukunda:

So I'm just going to know, in the philosophy of what you're saying, it's not just that you think we should include people, we should to represent people because that's a good thing to do to itself. Implicit in what you're saying is, you also think you'll get better outcomes?

Holly Ridings:

Yes. Sometimes I think people shy away from it because it can be hard. You as the leader have to be very open minded. You're potentially hiring people who aren't like you, holy moly. And so then you don't necessarily know how do you lead them because they don't have exactly the same background or the same experience that you do. And so again, maybe the second half of my journey beyond just learning space and now trying to really learn leadership is, how do you lead people when they have very different experiences than you do? And especially something like human spaceflight, where it's been passed on, the knowledge, from year to year and generation to generation in this kind of closed community.

Holly Ridings:

And I think that opening your aperture as a leader to try to figure out how to do that adds value. And when you consider how much human spaceflight is growing exponentially, it's absolutely a requirement to do that. If we don't open the aperture and be leaders of human spaceflight writ large, then we will not be relevant here in the future

Gautam Mukunda:

Diversity doesn't just mean race, gender, or even nationality. It's also about different types of organizations, public sector ones like NASA and private sector ones like SpaceX and Blue Origin that NASA now works with every day. The same week that we talked, Richard Branson shot himself in this space. Then a few days after our interview, Jeff Bezos followed. How does working in space change when some of the people there are there to make a profit?

Gautam Mukunda:

You mentioned the growth in human spaceflight, and of course, it's not just growing in government hands, it's growing in private hands as well. And at one level, these are astonishing achievements and they are, they are replicating what Alan Shepard did exactly 60 years ago. And so how do you handle the diversity of working both with Russians and with people in commercial space? And how do you think about the differences in philosophy and approach there?

Holly Ridings:

The first one when you said they're replicating Alan Shepard, the thing that popped into my head is my son, he has this idea, "Well, I read a book once and now I can read. I know how to read, I don't ever have to practice really do it again." And I'm like, "Well, but if you read another book, you're going to learn more and you're going to have a different perspective." So a little bit when anybody says, "Well, I went to the moon once." Or, "Oh, well, Alan Shepard did that, what's the point of doing it again?" I'm like, "Well, but in your life anywhere, just do a skill or a thing or an event once and say, 'Hey, I'm good enough at that now.'"

Holly Ridings:

It doesn't really work that way. So I imagine what we learned, obviously with a completely commercial company doing that with a very different crew here years later? There is also room and space for all of us. So anyone who wants to show up with capability and contribute and even pave their own path in a way that helps overall the human race make progress, I think that's amazing. So at its core, that's what we're trying to do here, learn and be relevant and have fun and make progress for the human race.

Gautam Mukunda:

I do think that's a big part of what if people find so inspiring about what you do is that in this moment of, obviously international tensions are never zero, but when they seem to be getting worse right now, there's the sense of, this is the best of what human beings can do.

Holly Ridings:

Yeah. I think every day we are incredibly lucky. Certainly, there's a lot of stress and challenge because what we do is inherently risky, but the goal is uniform, to try to fly safely in space, to try to accomplish things, to try to keep the people who are actually sitting on the rockets safe and to bring them home. And that is universal across all of government space, commercial space, and really put together human spaceflight. And so it does make a lot of the other things easier. Even when you have disagreements and you squabble obviously, exactly how to do many of those things as people do when they have a lot of technical knowledge and a lot of ideas about how to make progress.

Holly Ridings:

But at the end of the day, we fundamentally all have the same goal, and you just really can't discount how powerful that is. It is incredibly powerful.

Gautam Mukunda:

It's easy when talking about leadership and space with Holly to focus on what's changed, the new diversity she manages, for example, but some essential tasks for leaders are eternal. When I coach leaders, I tell them, but look at the end of the day, the ultimate test of your leadership, there are going to be two. One is assembling your team, and the second half is the moment when it's really going to come down to you as leadership in a crisis. So I'd love to probe your philosophy on both of those.

Gautam Mukunda:

The first one is when you think about team, we've talked about diversity, but when you're thinking about how I structure my team, do you have like a set of criteria? Is it intuitive? Or do you have a set of like, "This is what I'm thinking about. This is how I'm going to build a team. This is my philosophy of putting it together"?

Holly Ridings:

Obviously, there's lots of layers to that question.

Gautam Mukunda:

Of course, yeah.

Holly Ridings:

But we talked a little bit about the hiring process. Building your team starts with the people you hire. You're not necessarily landing on the moon or first commercial crew development mission, you're just getting your legs under you, a lot of practice. And so the challenge starts with hiring, but the challenge is how do you find the person who can do that, but see into the future that in five, seven, eight, 10 years, they're going to be able to handle leading?

Holly Ridings:

We actually are okay, I think testing for the leading under pressure in the crisis part, but the picking your team piece, because you're always trying to forecast, what do you need in the future? That keeps me up at night. And so we talked about our hiring earlier, so assuming you pick the right people, then you have to teach them your philosophy. I tend to be the 50 ideas a day and maybe one of them sticks, one of them is good. I'm always pushing the envelope. People come and say, "Well, I think I can get that done by two weeks." And I'm like, "Well, why not next week?"

Holly Ridings:

And not in, "This is your deadline, give up your life, never see your family," kind of way, but, "Hey, just explain to me." So I'm always pushing the envelope because in my opinion, again, as leaders of human spaceflight, we have to disrupt ourselves in order to stay ahead and be relevant in terms of leadership. If we're not disrupting ourselves, well, how do we lead the industry through all of the transition and changes that are going on? The second thing is then creating trusted lieutenants. So flight directors in the office right now, there's about 27. That's usually what we average.

Holly Ridings:

And then through them, we lead all of the human spaceflight missions. I could quote you off the top of my head what all the big missions are for the next couple of years. And so flight director is in charge of every one of those, and then I'm in charge of the flight directors. And so the next step is really helping them understand at a philosophical level, what we're trying to do here in terms of leadership, like how we want to lead. We want to lead forward, we want to be relevant. We want to challenge the system enough, not enough to destroy it, but enough to push on it, get some growth.

Holly Ridings:

And then after that, you really focus on their development and their training beyond just the, I'm working in mission control in order to do that, because they'll come in with different skills. Some of them are really strong, leading teams already type of thing. So when you're talking about picking your team, it's almost a multi-step process. And the initial picking is the scariest because you're trying to forecast into the future. And then after that, it's a series of steps over many years and then a continuing process to try to continue to create, what do you want the world to see and what do you want to do in the world in terms of being a flight director and the leadership associated?

Holly Ridings:

So the leading in a crisis, people come to be flight directors with some operational experience. And it's usually some kind of critical experience. They're not the leader of the operational team necessarily, maybe a specific system, but they have some operational experience and they've demonstrated that under pressure, they're not going to freeze. They're going to be able to communicate. And those are really the two biggest pieces. When faced with a crisis and you need to make a decision, can you communicate what it is that you want to do and do that relatively quickly, sort of that fight or flight freezer, babble type of thing.

Holly Ridings:

And so most of their previous operational experience will prove that to you one way or another. And then after that, you'd practice.

Gautam Mukunda:

One of the characteristics of crises is an ambiguity. That is almost definitional to the nature of a crisis in a sense, you don't know what you don't know, and you may not even know what questions to ask. So how do you in a situation in which lives are on the line, how do you handle that kind of radical uncertainty? How do you think about it?

Holly Ridings:

This is super fun. I should have professors of a leadership and organizational behavior read back my answers all the time. I'm going to learn a bunch. This is awesome. Can we do this some more?

Gautam Mukunda:

It'd be my pleasure, anytime.

Holly Ridings:

No, I'm not joking. It's actually really helpful because certainly where I am, people don't do that super often, and that's actually really helpful. I'm thinking about it. Let's see. So a lot of that is figuring out what we call the next worst failure, what's the next worst thing that can happen. And so a lot of the data and the information tracks with the time that you have. So up until you run out of time, we try to get more data, and then we decide to make a decision and you make a decision based on the data that you have available. And sometimes that's not very much and sometimes that's way too much.

Holly Ridings:

And sometimes that's what you need, but everything runs on a timer in terms of when you need to make a decision. And so then the next question is, well, how do you know when you need to make a decision? And a lot of that is what we do training flight directors, as what's the next thing you need to decide. So not only just the piece in front of you, the tactical piece, but that next first failure and the next failure. And once you've done it for a while, you can start to stack them. You can see like five steps into the future. It's like playing chess. If I do this move and this move, and this move, and this move, oh crap, they're going to get my queen.

Holly Ridings:

If I do this move and this move, and this move, and this move, Ooh, I'll get their knight. And people can see that in their heads when you look at a chess board. We can actually see that in our heads when you look at spaceflight and the issue and the failure that you're dealing with. And so just like chess, you make a move, well, will they make a move? When I have more data, maybe they moved like you thought they were going to, or maybe they move something different. And so maybe that's where the analogy ends because you can't always wait for the next move.

Gautam Mukunda:

So this crystallizes in my head something I learned from studying the British General, the Duke of Wellington, one of the things for leadership in a crisis is make no decisions before you have to. One of the things you saw about when he was doing battle plans is he never strolled. When he had to make a decision, he could do it in a split second, but you can see him thinking through his enemies like, "I'm going to learn, I'm going to learn, I'm going to learn, I'm going to learn. And when I know what I need to know, then I can go." But he never felt pressured to go before that. Does that make sense?

Holly Ridings:

It does make a lot of sense, the challenge, of course, Duke Wellington, flight directors, other leaders is the leader has to know when's the time to make a decision, because if you do too early, well, that's not good, you've lost your opportunity to get additional data. If you do it too late, well, then that can be really bad. So we spend a lot of time trying to train that skill, to hone, to know that timeframe where you need to make a decision.

Gautam Mukunda:

I have no idea what kids will learn about in school 1,000 years from now, but if we're still around and care about our history, kids will learn that the first people ever to walk on the moon were sent there by the Apollo Project. Now, in a new century and with a new chief flight director, NASA is looking to do it again and to do it better. The leadership challenges associated with such an undertaking are immense. And there was no way I was going to miss the chance to ask her about them.

Gautam Mukunda:

What is your vision for Artemis? If you were to compare the complexity of this to Apollo, how would you do it?

Holly Ridings:

I think that Apollo had their own challenges because it was the first time they'd ever done it. I think.

Gautam Mukunda:

And my wristwatch had more computing power than all of NASA.

Holly Ridings:

You're right. To me, it's almost like apples to oranges. Artemis has complexity, it has again, different spaceships spacecraft. And many of those are going to be built commercially, we've got international partners. And so again, it's an international global endeavor to get to the moon. So that adds some complexity, a little bit different than Apollo, but Apollo had its own complexity because it was a very nuts and bolts approach. We didn't have the competing technology, the automation, that type of thing that we do today. So they were both complex in very different ways.

Holly Ridings:

And one of the interesting discussions we're having is at NASA, we really like lessons learned. So when you have an event, then you go and try to learn from it.

Gautam Mukunda:

You mentioned learning from failure, and I know that part of that is you have everybody read the Columbia accident investigation report. Why do you do that? Why do you have everybody read this report?

Holly Ridings:

Well, it stems from military history. So NASA at the beginning, and all of the astronauts, and you mentioned this early on, test pilots and some military units, some places call it like a hot wash. So to debrief what went right, what went wrong. You've all seen movies with fighter pilots, they're sitting in the ready room after they flown and going through how it went and type thing. So the concept originally stems from military and then our tie into military history. But over time, NASA has a tremendously strong culture. We have things, you've put out a couple of sayings, but some of ours are lead your leader.

Holly Ridings:

So when you train people to work in mission control, part of their job is to lead their leader. And that starts on day one. And so if you think about our culture, one of the other things is all 13 failure's not an option. And so all of those things roll together to have this very ingrained process of this debrief, this lessons learned, what did we learn from this event? How do we apply it? How do we make it better?

Gautam Mukunda:

Great leaders need a vision of the future. If any organization on the entire planet or off it can be said to create that future, it's NASA. Once we do this amazing project to get us back to the moon, what are your goals for what you want to achieve once we're there?

Holly Ridings:

Well, the first thing absolutely get down to the surface and that will be, I think, again a positive and amazing achievement for the world. You've got to now build up your infrastructure on the surface. So if it took all those different parts to get Artemis to flow together, to build a system that gets you to the moon and back effectively, now you've got to start same thing on the surface of the moon. You need housing and you need transportation, and you need science obviously is super important component. And then you got to be able to get all of that back to earth.

Holly Ridings:

So people at NASA are working on those farther downstream capabilities. And so a lot of the discussion right now at the high levels is surface operations, what are we going to do on the surface beyond just the, "Hey we got here and let's be here a couple of days and head back."

Speaker 11:

We are currently performing the divert maneuver, per velocity is about 75 meters per second at an altitude of about a kilometer off the surface of Mars.

Holly Ridings:

On February 18th of this year, scientists gathered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to monitor the Rover Perseverance as it descended to the surface of Mars. It was the culmination of years of work, decades of scientific achievement, and a seemingly endless supply of dedication. It's almost impossible to even begin to calculate the hours, and days, and weeks of time that went into this one moment, guiding the Rover towards the surface of our celestial next door neighbor. And if that number is large, the amount of work it will take to land a person on the surface of the red planet will surely be well, if you'll pardon the phrase, astronomical.

Holly Ridings:

And yet, that's the goal that Holly set for herself. How does she prepare herself for a leadership challenge that monumental?

Speaker 11:

Current speed is about 38 meters per second, altitude about 300 meters off the surface of Mars.

Holly Ridings:

I had this epiphany, so I'll tell you the story. We talked about my origin story in space and Challenger, that sparked my interest and love of human spaceflight. But from a leadership standpoint, I have the second origin story. I was in California and my son was like three. I'd been on the road for a couple of weeks and my boss calls and he says, "Hey, I need you to go to New York." And I was like, "I'm not going to New York, I'm going home. I need to go home." But of course, because he's my boss and he's awesome, I said, "Okay, what do you need?"

Holly Ridings:

"I need you to go to New York and there's this group that's meeting. And the new chief astronaut is going to go, you could hang out with him, it would be good for you." "Okay, fine." So I dragged myself onto the red eye from California to New York, cross country, show up at JFK, do in the morning. And the next morning at 7:00 AM, I find myself on this large bus driving out to where the fire department of New York training called The Rock. And I'm like half awake, toothpicks in your eyes, tired kind of thing, and trying to open them. And I'm like, "Oh, why am I here? Okay, I can do this. I can do this. I'm not tired. I'm not tired."

Holly Ridings:

And so we go in and it's whole room full of people, 150 people. There's a couple other NASA people there, which is how we got invited. We're all split up at tables and I'm still sitting there thinking, "What in the world?" And then the guy who is in charge of this, he starts talking, and he was talking about selection. How do we select people for all these critical jobs all over the world? So special operations, firefighting, smokejumpers. And I woke up and went, "Wait a minute, who are these people?" And so I started really listening and thought, "Oh my gosh, they're all like me. We're all trying to solve the same problem, how do you hire the right people? What kind of training do they need? What kind of support do they need? How do you prevent burnout? Just on and on and on and on.

Holly Ridings:

And so sitting at my table is, you name it, secret service guy, now there's the Mayo Clinic, some special ops folks, the guy who did all the hiring for Google, just amazing people. And I just literally had this epiphany like, "Wow, I have found my people." And so that entire community, and now I'm going to count you, is part of my personal network for growth that I just go back to over and over. And I've been able to then piggyback of all of that to help fight directors and NASA and so on and so forth. We're all trying to solve the same problems, we're all trying to do the same thing and make the world a better place.

Speaker 11:

We started our constant velocity. According which means we are about to conduct the five plane maneuver.

Speaker 12:

These last direct to earth tones.

Speaker 13:

As expected. As expected

Speaker 11:

Skyping maneuver has started.

Gautam Mukunda:

Holly Ridings leads in situations where absolutely everything must work perfectly, rockets, landing manuals, and most of all team. Nothing can be left to chance. And in the words of Holly's famous predecessor, Gene Kranz, who was immortalized in the movie, Apollo 13, failure is not an option. But it's not enough to trust your preparation. You also have to be able to think on the fly, deal with problems as they arise with a cool head and direct your people to do the same.

Speaker 11:

Touchdown confirmed. Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life.

Gautam Mukunda:

So given all of the skills, all the accomplishments, and all of the experience she carries with her to work every day, I was eager to ask Holly our final question. In your career, you've met some amazing people, is there one who sticks out, the one who most impressed you and why? Why that person?

Holly Ridings:

Really hard question. I think that's a really hard question. What do I value in people? Working in mission control, you get to meet a lot of people, just rockstars, athletes, politicians, you name it. Here's one thing that's really interesting to me that I've learned from meeting all those people, when you work at mission control you always have, again, we talk algorithm or this app running in your brain. And over time, it's made it very hard for me personally to relax.

Holly Ridings:

And it also makes it sometimes hard to be really present in the moment because again, it's always like your phone, you have these apps running in your background draining your battery a little bit. So I've really appreciated people who are just very present in the moment, like I'm at mission control and I look you in the eye and I'm interested, and I want to ask you questions and it's not just a PR event for them. So that's my criteria. If you made me name one person, Hugh Jackman, I really, really thought a lot of Hugh Jackman, just in both of those categories. So there you go.

Holly Ridings:

I had the opportunity to meet him, super authentic, very intelligent, very excited interests in the moment. It's hard to name people. The people I enjoy the most, and he was super fun to talk to, but in general, the people we really enjoy the most, we get a lot of first responders, we get a lot of military, we get a lot of students. Those are usually the most fun to share space with versus maybe bigger names that come through. But I figured I'd give any answer instead of just give you a non-answer.

Holly Ridings:

Like so many others, I'm obsessed by the big three space leadership and Christopher Nolan movies. So how could I conclude with anything, but a quote from his movie Interstellar, the lead character says, "These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known, we count these moments as our proudest achievements." He continues, "Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us." It is a perfect expression of the task ahead of Holly and of NASA, whose accomplishments are among humanity's greatest achievements.

Holly Ridings:

Apollo took human beings to the moon and declared, "We came in peace for all mankind." Now, Holly is leading our return with a team that really does represent all of us. She tells us, you can't surpass the achievements of the past by sticking to the ways of the past. Building on NASA spectacular legacy, she's changing the way NASA works, building teams that are non-hierarchical instead of top down, working with other countries and private companies and bringing people of every background into the room and onto the spacecraft.

Holly Ridings:

It's not the work of a moment, or a year, or even a decade, but that's how leaders leave a legacy, by inspiring people to create something greater than they ever thought they could, by forge them into a team, and by steering them through the crises that are inevitable when people work to do the impossible. You can imagine that one of the few things better than a conversation with Holly Ridings is more of that conversation. We invite you to hear the full unedited version of our discussion at nasdaq.com/world-reimagined-podcast.

Outro:

World Reimagined with Gautam Mukunda, a leadership podcast for a changing world, an original podcast from NASDAQ. Visit the World Reimagined website at nasdaq.com/world-reimagined-podcast.