Adrian Slywotzky Quotes

“From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough’ and ‘Competent’.

Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.”

“If you gather a team of experienced leaders and ask them why past projects failed, the explanations flow readily:

- the project was bigger than we realised
- we were too slow
- our design was flawed
- we were operating from faulty assumptions
- the market changed
- we had the wrong people
- our technology didn’t work
- our strategy was unclear
- our costs were too high
- our organisation sabotaged us
- the competition was tougher than we thought
- we reorganised ourselves to death
- we fought among ourselves
- our strategy was flawed
- our strategy was good but our execution was lousy
- we ran into unexpected bottlenecks
- we misunderstood our customers
- we were short on resources
- the economics didn’t work
- we got killed by internal politics
- ...”

“Lovallo and Kahneman offer a useful prescription to repair this cognitive bias: Get the data. Track down actual figures on launch failure rates for your company, your industry, other industries or projects similar to yours. The numbers will be fascinating – and sobering.”

“Risky launches are, as if intoxicated by their own sense of self-confidence, they plunge ahead, often committing many of the same mistakes that have doomed countless launches before them. They end up adding to the dismal failure statistics.”

“The heroism Kranz displayed in that situation wasn’t physical heroism, military heroism or political heroism, but organisational heroism, which is arguably every bit as important but which often gets short shrift.

Compounded of tenacity, imagination, shrewd judgement, self-awareness and sheer willpower, it’s a form of heroism that’s desperately needed today and that is in especially short supply in most failed launch attempts.”

“Try this nightmare exercise: Imagine disaster. Ask why you failed; list all the possible reasons. Then do your best to counter those mistakes before they have a chance to occur.

Most launches die from self-inflicted wounds. It means that if you’re willing to take a clear-eyed look at the forces seemingly conspiring to derail your next launch, you’ll probably find that the most powerful factors are actually under your control.”