April 30, 2009 Vol. 2 Issue 4
Christine Williams, Director of NASA’s Systems Engineering Leadership Development Program (SELDP), has joined the Academy team.
Williams, who has directed SELDP since its inception last year, will continue in this role at the Academy. “I am coming to APPEL now because there is greater recognition for the need for technical leadership development,” she says. “NASA is really on the cutting edge of understanding that in certain scientific, technical, and engineering disciplines, there are specific elements that are important for technical leaders to develop. The strategy for doing that needs to be a bit different than for a general leadership program.”
SEDLP addresses this need for technical leadership, she says, by targeting specific competencies. “The SELDP focuses on the competency model for systems engineering. It’s not a general leadership model—it’s specifically for systems engineers — and it looks at development from the point where engineers come into the agency up to the point where they are leading very large systems engineering activities,” Williams says.
SELDP’s stakeholders and advocates have been deeply involved in ensuring that the program meets NASA’s needs. “(NASA Chief Engineer) Mike Ryschkewitsch and the EMB (Engineering Management Board) own this program. They are involved in every aspect of the program. I design and implement SELDP, but Mike Ryschewitsch and the EMB are the board of directors that provide the goals, guidance, and direction for the program. Their involvement gives SELDP robust technical alignment with the agency’s needs. It also gives the program an enormous amount of strength.”
In the course of working with SELDP’s stakeholders to define the program elements, Williams has noted an increasing acceptance across NASA of the need to build strong leadership skills. “There has been more emphasis at NASA in the importance of having effective people skills. There is a growing understanding of the human component and how that can make a difference between success and failure. In SELDP these leadership skills have equal weight with the technical skills developed on assignments,” she says.
The number and quality of developmental assignments submitted by the centers has also impressed Williams. “We had eighty-eight assignments submitted last year, and every one of them was a gem,” she says. “They were challenging and they were important work — the participants were really going to be responsible for something. I think the centers did a fabulous job identifying both strong candidates and developmental assignments for the program.”
As SELDP’s first class of fifteen participants approaches completion of the program in June, Williams takes the long view. “Our success will be determined by quite a few measures, but the most important one will be whether we have people ready to take on the next challenge to support the agency,” she says. “Do NASA employees have the experiences and development so that when we get ready to advertise jobs in systems engineering, we can turn around and identify a few good candidates inside (NASA) for every one of those positions? Then we’ll know we’re constantly meeting the needs of the agency.”
Read a brief summary of the SELDP study of systems engineering competencies and behaviors.
