MANAGING MARTIANS
Donna Shirley, WITI Hall of Fame Inductee, talks about generating creativity and accomplishing goals in the workplace.

By Sally Richards

Not every kid has dreams of going to Mars. Fortunately, one such ten-year-old-girl had visions of reaching out to the mysterious red planet. She studied diligently, learned to work in a man's world and kept the dream alive until the day she could take us all there.

"I had no doubt I was going to get there," says Donna Shirley, one-time manager of the Mars Exploration Project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "It was just beautiful how everything worked out."

It was July 4, 1997, and as the entire world watched, the Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner Rover successfully landed on Mars. Two months after that historic landing, the Mars Global Surveyor went into the planet's orbit and gathered some of the most significant scientific data of our time.

Shirley first began reaching out to the red planet after reading Arthur C. Clarke's The Sands of Mars. Years later, she carried that inspiration with her to JPL where she would find others who would fund the project to realize her goal. Years before partnering with JPL, Shirley had quite a challenging path in front of her.

Her career became apparent to all when, at age 16, her love and desire for flight and space culminated in a pilot's license. Shirley shunned home economics and concentrated on the sciences to ready herself for a career in engineering. She studied in a man's field in a country that did not encourage women to join as equals in the workforce. The only woman in her classes at the University of Oklahoma, Shirley earned degrees in aerospace /mechanical engineering.

"Although the guys in my classes were fine with me being an engineer, my college advisor for aeronautical engineering told me girls couldn't be engineers," Shirley adds with an ironic tone. "My parents were always very encouraging of whatever I wanted to do, and I was always expected to do well in whatever I chose," says Shirley, who has a daughter now studying psychology in college.

"My proudest moment was having my daughter, my second moment was when the Pathfinder and Sojourner actually worked. When you consider that it was going 17,000 miles an hour and it wasn't supposed to make just another hole in the ground-well, that was a great achievement."

Though Shirley has been successful she has also experienced discrimination in the work place. "At a place before I worked at JPL I was chased around the office by a horny, old boss, but I've never had that problem at JPL." At times, Shirley has experienced more subtle discrimination. "It was that men were sometimes getting the jobs I was applying for. For instance, I applied for this one job and told I wasn't right for the position because I had problems in this one skill area. Well, they ended up hiring a guy who had more problems in that area than I did. You can't go bull-headed against these things, you have to just finesse your way through, move around on shifting ground and find the soft spots. Fortunately, JPL values intelligence and hard work above all else."

In 1966, Shirley began working at JPL in California. Her career at JPL includes years of working as a team member on projects such as the Mariner's 10 trips to Venus and Mercury and a 1991 assignment as chief engineer of a $1.6 billion project to explore asteroids, a comet and Saturn.

Events, such as the Mars landing, don't happen on their own. It was Shirley's personal vision that helped generate and harness the innovative creativity of the Mars Exploration Team to make the journey possible.

"This is an example of what occurs when creativity is sought, cultivated and managed," says Shirley of her own management approach. "We formed and used a creative, diverse team to produce an innovative product within tight money constraints.

"Group creativity begins with an idea - the vision of a singular person," she says about creativity in the workplace environment. "Usually, a creation is built around a mental template, structured from experience or training-pure creation rarely occurs, if it exists at all. The best individual creations aren't spontaneous eruptions of ideas. They result from often frustrating trials. In other words, creativity is hard work."

Shirley, one of the pioneers of space travel and the first woman to ever head a NASA program and currently serves on Women in Technology International's (WITI) www.witi.com, Advisory Board and was recently awarded the NASA Medal for Outstanding Leadership and inducted into WITI's Hall of Fame.

Being inducted into WITI's Hall of Fame was a very proud moment for Shirley. "I especially enjoyed meeting the other honorees who are all incredibly distinguished. I looked out at the sea of faces and realized that there are a lot of technical women."

"WITI has also given me a lot of exposure to people who have been hiring me to speak about creativity and teamwork. WITI has inspired contact with other senior professional women and begun an exchange of ideas and information. Being a member of WITI has also given me the pleasure of meeting other women with similar experiences."

WITI brought Shirley to the organization not only for her strong skills in the technology industry, but because she is a wonderful example of a woman who has made great strides for women in the workplace. When speaking on the topic, Shirley is straightforward about women who need to get off the 'I'm entitled to it because I'm a woman,' bandwagon and be firm in their goals and convictions.

"Women need to find a niche and be successful at what they do and must be prepared to work real hard. I get real annoyed at women who say, 'Gosh, I'm not being promoted enough.' I ask them if they've asked for a promotion. They say, 'No, I'm just working hard and expect to be rewarded.' Balderdash! These women are working hard and expect being a woman to be an advantage. You can't sustain a career on that. It's never going to be smooth, you just have to keep plowing ahead and lock firm on an objective. One thing is certain: there's no sense staying in a place where you can't grow. Wherever you are, give it a try and make sure that the barriers you see are really there. There is no magic formula, you just have to do what's best for yourself."

"Management in aerospace is somewhat behind other industries," says Shirley of how difficult it is to become a manager in the industry. "The Cold War warriors are still leading the industry. For instance, when I took time off to have my daughter, I wanted to go back to work, but I couldn't seem to get back into management. I asked my boss what was going on and he said everyone thought I was fulfilled as a mother and I wouldn't want a responsible job. Most of the managers' wives were happy to stay at home and raise children-the managers couldn't begin to conceive why I would want to get my old responsibilities back. These are guys who grew up in the Depression Era or in WWII. Once this generation dies off, we'll see the field really open up for women."

Shirley was aggressive about getting into management at JPL and learned quickly that she'd have to let go of the technical end to manage the people who work on the technical details of projects. She also learned a great deal about how groups generate and process creative ideas. Her management abilities took us to Mars on time and under budget. Shirley recently released her second book, Managing Martians, and is touring the world to give workshops about how to successfully manage groups of diverse people. Her first book, Managing Creativity, is an introduction to the workshop where people learn to manage outside of "normal" management roles.

"When you manage creativity, you have to be ready to change the plan, be flexible," says Shirley. You just have to keep revising. You must evaluate where you are throughout the process. Command and control works just fine if you're running a sweat shop, but not for running a creative team.

"Anarchy doesn't work," Shirley points out. "Your team has to be motivated, but their energies must be directed toward a desired outcome. At the other end of the scale, slaves are not particularly productive and eventually will revolt. As a manager, achieving balance through teamwork-that area of productive, focused effort-is the secret to managing creativity."

Shirley retired from JPL after 32 years with the laboratory. Beginning this fall she will take a position as Assistant Dean of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. She will also be offering the Managing Creativity classes through the University's continuing education program. Shirley will also be hard at work on another book.

Sally Richards is an internationally published business and technology writer tracking trends worldwide. She lives in Silicon Valley and can be reached at Wryte4u@aol.com.