Earlier today, I attended a talk by Gene Kranz (NASA flight
director during the Gemini
and Apollo programs).
I seriously enjoyed his insights into leadership, teamwork, org structure,
determination, focus, and TRUST amongst teammates. It was interesting to hear about
how information flowed to the mission’s leaders and how decisions were made.
Every aspect of the mission had to be analyzed and documented (side note: nothing
beats good documentation), processes were designed and captured for every
single aspect of the mission, checklists were created in advance, everyone was
the best at what they did, multidisciplinary teams, and so much more. It’s
amazing how many similarities exist in the way successful teams operate and the
attributes that make good leaders, irrespective of the discipline or the era.
His talk was based on his book “Failure is not an option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond“. 

Image source: Wikipedia