Apollo 13

Both sides of the argument were well supported and we agreed to disagree with the following conclusions: one side took the stance that the mission was not successful because they did not make it to the moon; the other side took the stance that the mission was successful because the astronauts’ lives were saved and that the mission evolved into bringing the astronauts home safely. The second issue the green team debated was whether or not ethics played a role in the decisions made by the Apollo 13 team, ground and space. Again we had a split jury. One side felt that ethics and integrity were clearly shown in Apollo 13 when they decided to abandon the mission to the moon when the spacecraft failed for the safety of the astronauts. Both leaders, Lovell and Kranz, demonstrated strong leadership and integrity by collaborating closely with their teams to facilitate clear communication to help escape the danger. This ideology should be emphasized in business corporations. If the collective goal could be identified at the beginning of each problem, it is not difficult to facilitate a collective effort to achieve a common goal. The essence of this film is to teach entities integrity and teamwork. The other side felt that while they could see how the mission was conducted with integrity, but they still having a difficult time seeing how any of it came down to ethics. They did not see any ethical dilemmas played out in the film or the real story of Apollo 13. The mission was aborted, in order to save the astronauts’ own lives, but that is not an ethical decision. We felt that the two most relevant issues were leadership and teamwork. These are the important learning lessons from the film, Apollo 13. Leadership, with complement to teamwork, salvaged the space crew from complete failure. If we had to pick just one relevant issue however, leadership would definitely win out. Your thoughts, insights, and/or conclusions about the Apollo 13 leadership and team lessons. Even though the Apollo 13 team failed the ultimate mission to the moon, we believe leadership and teamwork throughout the film is what made the mission successful. Our team believes teamwork and leadership is what steered the crew through the storm of great danger to reach the haven of safety to Earth. This film depicted characteristics of courage, perseverance, resilience and synergy that embody the idea of leadership and teamwork. The moral of the story can exemplify the challenges leaders face in modern day business. If corporate leaders can take values from the movie and instill strong leadership and teamwork principles into their business, this promotes sustainable success that will overcome any challenges. From the film, Gene Kranz and Jim Lovell collaborated through complex issues and stayed vigilant to their common goal in preparing for the astronaut’s safety return. We have found the J. Singh’s (2008) article entitled, â€Å"Imposters Masquerading as Leaders: Can the Contagion be Contained? † supports Apollo13’s leadership idea through the elements of energy, expertise, and integrity. A true leader according to Singh (2008) â€Å" his energy level at work, or drive, and passion to excel; or what in sporting parlance is referred to as the ‘killer instinct. ’ It performs the role of a starter or dynamo in an engine. It triggers the machine to life† (p. 738). Lovell’s team and Kranz’s team worked together to work out solutions to power the Command Module enable to restart Odyssey to get them back to Earth. The film captured the intensity of the challenge when Kranz said â€Å"failure is not an option† (Grazer, 1995). At the height of the stress, Kranz and Lovell were kicked into the ‘killer instinct’ to do everything in their power to find a solution to bring Lovell’s team home. The second element of leadership according to Singh is expertise. Singh argued â€Å"raw energy can be wasteful, even destructive, if not harnessed well. Therefore, one must be skilled at handling it and channeling it for constructive purposes. Singh latter added expertise is fostered by the â€Å"advanced know-how. † It is acquired through one’s specialized education and training in the related discipline and through â€Å"personal earning distilled from day-to – day experiences† (p. 739). Lovell and his team received extensive training to prepare for their mission prior to launching. Kranz and his team are competent in directing the astronauts for the mi ssion. The teams shared and exchanged each other’s knowledge and expertise to execute the plan to persevere through the danger from death. The third element of leadership profile is integrity (Singh, 2008). Singh argued integrity may be an old fashioned virtue. However, â€Å"no company can claim excellence unless its management is based on a set of non-negotiable values (p. 739). Integrity is a broad term, some of the attributes to this word pertains to the film are honest/transparency, ethics or integrity, communication consistency, honoring commitments, mutual respect, extend credit and appreciation for job well done, accountability for mistakes and stay grounded to his/her beliefs and values (Singh, 2008). The idea of integrity and ethics were shown throughout the film. Lovell and his team were transparent to the problem throughout the challenge to avoid any miscommunications. Lovell and Kranz’s team maintained mutual respect and open communication on issues and challenges they were having in the mission. When Mattingly and Aaron found the way to restart Odyssey by transmitting the power from Aquarius to get Lovell’s team back to safely, their works were acknowledged and recognized by the leaders in the mission of saving Lovell’s team. Not only did the film demonstrated strong leadership skills in maintaining vigilance in prioritizing space crew’s safety, teamwork complements the final success of getting the crew back home safely. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith’s research (2005), â€Å"The Discipline of Teams† argued true teamwork is prescribed through teams sharing leadership roles, holding people accountable, specific team purpose each team delivers, collective work products, encourage open-ended discussions in problem setting situation, measuring performance by assessing collective work products, discussion and make decision that work for everyone (p. 64). These characteristics were apparent in Kranz’s team when they sit together to brainstorm solutions to bring the astronauts back to Earth. Each member in Kranz’s teams was assigned different tasks and was encouraged to come up with new solutions to help solve this problem. Your experiences with the team process. Challenges? Benefits? Changes from beginning of week to end of week? Team project usually is more of a challenge than ease due to the requirement of equal commitments from every member of the team. Teamwork from online program is more difficult as teams re made of members that are from different geographic locations. The challenge was even greater for us because our team has the largest time zone difference than the other teams in our class. Brittan is working Afghanistan and Shawnae and I (Yi) live on the opposite side of the country from Shawnae. We were limited in being able to â€Å"meet† and discuss the project as frequently as we would want due to other obligations, such all of us work full time. However, we were able to manage this stress by actively communicating with each other about our situation and limitation. We were able to utilize team forums and chat room to facilitate our communication for this case project. Despite the fact that we were separated by different time zones and working full time, our team were able to communicate last Sunday and properly communicate the work we have to do. Each of the members took on a portion of the assignment and work on it on our own time. Even though we have never met physically, we were confident in our each other’s ability to meet the requirement of getting our portion of the work done on time for our discussion.