High Velocity Leadership Brian K. Muirhead & William L. Simon HarperBusiness, New York (1999) How does one do something that's never been done before?  Muirhead (with Simon's assistance) suggests how in a thrilling story of the Pathfinder Mission to Mars. Book Review © Dr. Terry J. van der Werff, CMC

A huge vision with all-important details.  A simple aim with a complex mission.  A complicated project with limited resources.  And it's never been done before!

This is the story of the Pathfinder Mission which landed a small rover on Mars July 4th, 1997, to sample the Martian surface and of the team that made it happen.  Pathfinder became the poster child for NASA's new "Faster, Better, Cheaper" approach to space missions.

This is a gripping story from the first page.  The imagery is vivid.  The challenges, excitement, and intensity are palpable.  "We have a confirmed signal" on page 5 sent chills up my spine.  Brian Muirhead was the flight system manager for Pathfinder.  This is his story and that of his Pathfinder team.  It details the four years of effort leading up to the landing and the subsequent months of scientific data gathering.

The overriding lesson is that to successfully meet a daunting challenge with few resources and little time, you must innovate like crazy (the old ways won't work), lead completely in the open with a hands-on approach in order to maintain a focussed, committed team, trust your team members to grow into their jobs, run interference for them, and minimize risk by being personally involved with whatever issue is critical at any given time.  Sounds simple, but it's not easy, as the Pathfinder Mission so amply demonstrates.

High Velocity Leadership is filled with technological wonder, superb engineering design, conflict, and drama.  However, this is not the book to read for new management principles and paradigms.  Yes, you will see certain management principles used in unusual ways and leadership techniques stretched to maintain the momentum of the team, but the principles and techniques themselves are already familiar to seasoned leaders.

Indeed, the primary shortcoming of the book is the feeling of "two voices," one telling the story and the other mining the story for management principles that sound new and profound, but are not. My advice is simple.  If you are into space or technology or teams, read the book for the story and skip the management parts.  If you want cutting edge management principles, seek them elsewhere.

The book opens new ground by introducing "VideoNotes on the Web at - www.hivelocity.com - where 15 movie clips for parts of the mission can be seen, conveying considerably more information than a simple photo can.  Expect to see more books adopt this technique to enhance the learning experience.

I close this review on a personal note, as this book brought back many fond memories.  I began my professional career as an aerospace engineer charged with looking ahead 30 years to guess what would be flying - whether it had wings or not was irrelevant - and to design testing facilities before it could fly.  I fell under the tutelage of a great man, dear friend, and mentor, Dr. Knox T. Millsaps, former Chief Scientist of the Air Force under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy.  Knox himself was mentored by Dr. Theodore von Karman, the founder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where the Pathfinder team did its work.  This book reminded me again of the intensity and joy that comes from conquering technological challenges for the first time.

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