High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper

Author - Brian K. Muirhead ... [Goo?] [Posters]
Author - William L. Simon ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from HarperCollins Publishers was reviewed on 15-Oct-2008.

Search ISBN:0887309747 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper Reference Book. Classifications : Leadership Management & Leadership Business & Investing Subjects Books Management Management & Leadership Business & Investing Subjects Books Entrepreneurship Small Business & Entrepreneurship Busines . Click the following link to view the cover of High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper.

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1) Hardcover Book High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper by HarperCollins Publishers. Brian K. Muirhead spins a great web of stories relating to the development and mission of the Mars Pathfinder. Against all odds regarding schedule and budget, he managed to keep his work teams focused on a shared vision towards a common goal. From initial proposal through early development into production and the actual mission, Brian and his team overcame obstacle after obstacle to make their dream of reaching and exploring Mars a reality. A must read for any manager of knowledge workers in the new global economy. The bible of faster, better, cheaper!¤

2) Hardcover Book High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper by HarperCollins Publishers. I bought this book earlier in the year. I saw it hyped on TV. After two recent massive failures costing at least 1/2 billion dollars total since my purchase of High Velocity Leadership..reading this book makes a person wince painfully. I am sure this new high risk management philosophy will be put on the grill when the U.S. Congress examines these failures. Thank God there were no human beings on these flights. Space exploration is the most dangerous, most high risk business ever conceived of by man short of war. After 42 years of this type of unforgiving scientific activity that has now largely been privitized and contracted out to the lowest bidder, it is time the U.S. reevaluates whether this is a successful policy or not. JPL head in-their-hands employees looking wistfully at their monitors are no longer cute or funny or sad. They own these failures along with President Clinton for cutting corners. This book, though describing one successful mission, actually becomes an insider´s account how they dodged the bullets of risk in the fastest, cheapest, but clearly not the best way. Now every single Mars project and possibly a lot of other NASA projects are in mortal jepordy because of the project management philosophy described in this book. The authors can´t have it both ways now. The whole world is watching. This book will be in the dollar or less bins at your local chain book store....and very soon...maybe before Christmas.¤

3) Hardcover Book High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper by HarperCollins Publishers. It is refreshing to see a book about one of NASA´s unmanned successes. No wonder why the public is unaware of the JPL. This books gives a glimpse into the many obstacles Pathfinder had even before it left Earth. Muirhead tells the story in a very down-to-earth style. I was a bit disappointed in the frequent references into business applications on the "cheaper, better & faster" approach. At times it disrupted the flow of the book and gave an informercial taste to this book. I would also have liked a closing chpater on some of the scientific results of the little rover that gave us a very memorable Fourth of July in 1997. Overall, I recommend this tale of scientific exploration just because it gives the public information on space exploration that it wouldn´t find elsewhere.¤

4) Hardcover Book High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper by HarperCollins Publishers. So THAT´S how they build a spacecraft. Great insight into the process and a really amazing glimpse into the mind of the man who made it happen. Lessons that can be applied to nearly any business today. If you only read one business book this year, this is THE ONE.¤

5) Hardcover Book High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper by HarperCollins Publishers. From a good business book, you expect to get ideas you can put into practice to be a better manager. From a good story book, you hope to get a story that carries you along. Getting both in the same book is rare and unexpected. A winner!¤

6) Hardcover Book High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper by HarperCollins Publishers. The Martian dust hadn´t been stirred by a craft from Earth in twenty-one years. This time the challenge had come with nearly impossible constraints: go there at a fraction of the cost, do it in a fraction of the time, take risks but don´t fail. We were working on a budget less than it would later cost to produce the movie Titanic, but unlike the movie we would need to provide a happy ending.

Our eftort, the Mars Pathfinder mission, has come to define the management approach of Faster, Better, Cheaper.

So begins this roller-coaster ride -- a management book wrapped in a powerful, real-world adventure story. At age forty-one, Brian Muirhead assembled a team that would have to build a spacecraft and land it on Mars for one-twentieth the cost and in half the time of the previous Mars effort twenty years earlier.

Experts who were sure the team could not succeed were stunned on Independence Day 1997, when Pathfinder landed safely on Mars and, aided by its self-propelled, toy-wagon-size rover, Sojourner, began sending back reams of scientific data and thousands of breathtaking color photographs from a rock-strewn terrain under a salmon-colored sky.

In this fast-paced personal account, Muirhead and coauthor William L. Simon explain how the Pathfinder team overcame the odds by discarding the familiar and replacing it with imaginative new technology, a highly unusual organizational structure, and a score of innovative business solutions ranging from the geography of the workplace to ways of speeding up procurement to an intuitive style of decision making on the run.

A chronicle of personal struggles and sacrifices that led to a historic triumph of space exploration, High Velocity Leadership provides powerful guidance on how Faster, Better, Cheaper can be put to work in your own organization.¤

7) Hardcover Book High Velocity Leadership : The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper by HarperCollins Publishers. Most of us think of the Mars Pathfinder mission as a triumph of technological wizardry. But Brian Muirhead, the engineer who spearheaded the project, sees it as something else: a triumph of managerial efficiency. The previous Mars mission had cost $3 billion. Muirhead, who was originally hired by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in part because of his real-world experience repairing Harley-Davidson motorcycles, had to do it for $150 million--less, he notes, than it cost James Cameron to film Titanic. The mantra at JPL was "Faster, better, cheaper." In an era of government belt-tightening, NASA had to prove to America that it could manage more spectacular space missions with less money, and in less time, too.

High Velocity Leadership shows how Muirhead and his team proved not only that "Faster, better, cheaper" can work but that´s it an excellent way to get things done. He and coauthor Simon walk readers through the project from conception to triumphant completion, giving each chapter a didactic spin. For example, in one chapter he talks about how a manager must be both the "glue" that keeps a team together and the "grease" that keeps it moving forward.

But while Muirhead has learned a few textbook lessons about management--he quotes several gurus in that field--he has learned also from the school of hard knocks. Thus, every management principle described in High Velocity Leadership includes theory, real-life examples from the Mars Pathfinder mission, and a life lesson or two. --Lou Schuler¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 12-Nov-2008, 08873097479780887309748, 960-640-070-900-470-490-P2B-8

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