Winning Support Through Selflessness

On April 11, 1970, the Apollo 13 mission was launched with the goal of becoming the third time that humans were going to step onto the surface of the moon. Two days later, an oxygen tank exploded, which then caused the other oxygen tank to release its contents into outer space. This crippled the Service Module.

One of the primary functions of the Service Module was to supply power to the Command Module, which housed the astronauts. With only fifteen minutes of power left, the astronauts were forced to move into the Lunar Module — which had limited, self-contained supplies of oxygen, water, and power — and use it as a lifeboat.

Instead of trying to land the crew on the moon, the mission became focused solely on bringing them back safely to earth.

For the next four days, extraordinary measures were undertaken by the NASA support staff. Flight technicians stayed at their consoles around the clock, working on every conceivable aspect of the rescue mission. Calculations for consumables such as oxygen, battery power, and water were fed into the computers. Engineers had to write completely new procedures and test them thoroughly, in just a matter of days. Simulations were run, checked, double-checked, rerun, and then re-verified.

Their selfless devotion was successful, and on April 17, 1970, astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise landed in the South Pacific Ocean. The story of the rescue became the stuff of legend, spawning books and a blockbuster movie.

The survival of the crew and their safe return stands as an incredible example of Winning Support.

Mission Control staff supported the astronauts by designing new solutions and in giving detailed instructions by which to carry out those solutions. They didn’t have email in those days, so Communications staff supported the Mission Control technicians by relaying messages between consoles using a pneumatic tube messaging system. In fact, they even delivered sandwiches to the Mission Control room using that same system.

One of my former managers was a computer programmer for a NASA sub-contractor. She supported the engineers who were performing the calculations and running the simulations. She spent the entire rescue mission in the basement of the Johnson Space Center hand-checking printouts of diagnostic calculations made by the computers to make sure the computers themselves weren’t malfunctioning. She slept only while waiting for the printers to finish churning out the next report to be checked.

There are many lessons to be learned from studying the Apollo 13 rescue mission even though most of us are not rocket scientists or hold others’ lives in our hands. Whether we provide support for nuclear plants, hospitals, office software, video games, or content-driven web sites, there are lessons that can help us provide Winning Support to our own clients.

One of the most critical elements of the Apollo 13 mission was the attitude of all involved: Failure is not an option. Each person involved with the mission had to be selflessly devoted to the astronauts, putting the needs of the crew and of the mission ahead of his or her own needs. In effect, the mission support staff had to adopt an attitude of servanthood toward the crew whose very lives depended upon it. The consequences of not following through on their tasks did not have to be explained.

In my own quest to provide Winning Support, I have had to ask myself some tough questions:

• How much of a servant’s attitude do I bring to my job in supporting my client and in maintaining our software?
• Do I put the needs of my end-users above my own?
• Am I putting others first?
• Am I here to serve my clients or am I just collecting a paycheck?

I have found that how I answer these questions has a direct bearing on my own job satisfaction, and I am absolutely positive that this is especially true in a Support or Maintenance role. The ongoing, day-to-day grind of facing never-ending problems from the field has the potential of eroding a person’s soul. The Internet is full of stories of Support technicians who have erupted towards their clients, walked off their jobs, and ended their careers in frustration.

I don’t want to be one of those stories, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be, either.

From painful introspection, I know that when I have not had a servant’s attitude toward my clients, my job has seemed frustrating. When I have put my needs first, I felt like I ended up in last place.

But yet, that same introspection reveals that when I have been most fulfilled in my career — when my job satisfaction has been the highest — the needs of the users have been first and foremost in my mind. My best work — my most creative solutions — have come when I have tried to solve their problems, and not my own.

Napoleon Hill was a man who studied the movers-and-shakers of the early 20^th Century and tried to encapsulate the secrets of their success. He became successful in his own right, becoming an advisor to two Presidents of the United States. He commented on this very subject, saying, "Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness."

The support staff at Mission Control whose efforts brought back Apollo 13 exhibited that sacrifice and unselfish behavior.

Compared to Apollo 13, our jobs might be considered mundane, and lives may not hang in the balance. However, I believe that if we put our clients first, we will achieve great things; and if not great things, then great satisfaction.

The best way to serve our clients is to follow good, solid principles in our code. We can make life easier for them by making our software easier to use. We can provide clean and efficient solutions. We can clean our code so that future changes in requirements have a minimal impact.

Winning Support starts with an attitude; only time will tell where that attitude will take us.

Let’s start Winning Support.