Dear Madam/Sir,
We invite You to the workshop by Mr. Dragos Batasanu named
NASA: failure is not an option
organized by the MBA Croatia Association. The workshop will be held on Monday, 23.09.2013 at 18:00 in the premises of HGK – Centar za poduzetništvo, inovacije i tehnološki razvoj (Nova cesta 3-7, 10000 Zagreb).
Applications
Admission to the workshop is free to all members of MBA Croatia Association, for all other participants there is a symbolic fee of 50,00 HRK. Number of seats is limited and seats will be filled in order of registration with advantage to members of the MBA Croatia Association. Register your attendance at the workshop here.
Presenter
Dragos Bratasanu is an internationally renowned award winning space scientist and consultant. He is the Founder & President of Lightman Consulting, company focused on providing cutting-edge sustainable solutions for enhancing personal and organizational performance. Built under the guidance of world’s top aerospace leaders, the company is a worldwide official provider of NASA’s Team Building & Leadership Program, offering international clients access to the same tools and techniques used by NASA and Fortune 500 companies in their highly complex projects.
Dragos is a PhD candidate in space sciences at the University of Siegen in Germany and a graduate of the Business & Management Department at the International Space University Space Studies Program 2012 hosted by Florida Institute of Technology and NASA Kennedy Space Center. He is involved in major European space programmes and projects and for his research and scientific achievements Dragos received several international awards from entities like the European Space Agency ESA, European Union Satellite Center EUSC, DigitalGlobe Inc. USA, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society in Canada, International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing in Australia. He is member of several international research committees and invited peer reviewer for various scientific journals and publications.
Dragos is presently a National Geographic collaborator and is actively involved in projects with top leaders from NASA, European Space Agency ESA, DLR German Aerospace Center, Stanford University, Florida Institute of Technology, International Space University, and many other organizations worldwide. As a speaker, he has been on stage on five continents – Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and Antarctica.
“I love your story, it’s a beautiful story, it’s inspirational!”
– Steve VAI, Musician
“I was straightaway seduced by Dragos’ ability to go to the point and lead some of the activities of our program. Dragos leads by example and everyone within our group his enthusiasm and dedication both inspiring and motivating. He undoubtedly created and demonstrated excellent multi-cultural skills in innovation and design thinking. He is an exceptional creative and forward thinking fellow who knows how to foster cooperation in a group and produce excellent results. He is an absolute professional; and it is a joy to work with him.”
– Prof. Dr. Guy Andre Boy, Chief Scientist NASA Kennedy Space Center & Director of Human Centered Design, Florida Institute of Technology
Overview
Social Risk Management in Project Teams – How NASA Builds Teams
In today’s business world we can only move ahead as a global community, with common goals and shared ideals. Space exploration has always been the greatest vision of humanity, and beyond the dreams, beyond the technological discoveries, space exploration requires highly competent project management and leadership skills.
What are the management and leadership key skills that allowed people from NASA to successfully build spaceships and space probes, to build and fly the Space Shuttle, to build and operate the International Space Station and put robots on Mars? How did they successfully manage such complex projects, with budgets of billions of dollars and how can we apply the same methods, the same processes, the same thinking patterns to create similar successes in our organizations? The aerospace industry had to learn severe and sometimes tragic lessons, and the insights are profound for every industry on Earth. Flawed social contexts – invisible behavioral forces – trigger project and mission failures. As Dr. John Mather, NASA Scientist and Nobel Prize Winner said – “More than 50% of the cost of a project is socially determined.”
In the second part of the talk, participants will learn the guidelines for authentic success, revealed by some of the world’s greatest visionaries – Prof. Scott Hubbard, the NASA Mars Program Director who landed 3 robots on Mars, Dr. Charles Pellerin, the NASA Director that built Hubble Space Telescope, Dr. Ed Hoffman, the Director of NASA Academy of Leadership, and internationally acclaimed musicians like Steve VAI and bestselling authors like Gregg Braden. We will discuss together about authentic success and how we can master our road to fulfillment and a meaningful life.
This brief workshop presents the processes used by NASA to build its highly successful technical teams and how other organizations in any other industry can implement this knowledge to trigger sustainable change and increased performance in their teams. The information presented has boosted team performance in over 1500 NASA project teams and Fortune 500 companies, engineering teams, and management teams, including the people responsible for NASA’s most complex systems — the Space Shuttle, space telescopes, robots on Mars, and human space flight missions. Managing and improving the team social context is the key parameter that drives success or disaster in organizations.
After this workshop, participants will know how to:
- Evaluate in a quantitative manner the performance and risk of a project as part of a health check and benchmark them against 300 NASA and Fortune 500 teams,
- Improve engagement between divisions by understanding their latent social signatures and by addressing the interests in a way that can be easily accepted by the other party,
- Change the social context of relationships with important clients, to improve performance and return. Change the social context in their teams to avoid failures,
- Identify and manage the four latent behavioral factors that limit team performance,
- Understand the latent social signatures that drive the culture of a client or a project sponsor to win proposals. How to write project proposals that match customer culture,
- Discover what are the guidelines for authentic success and a meaningful life.
Croatian 
English