Kelly Johnson & Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks

 

I'm reading a terrific book by Josh Dean.  The title is The Impossible Factory: The Remarkable True Story of Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works, America's Innovation Machine.   The book chronicles the history of this famous highly secretive research and development organization at Lockheed.  Moreover, it explores the principles of organization and leadership that Kelly Johnson developed to manage the Skunk Works.  I found one particular passage about Kelly Johnson illuminating, since it highlighted how a powerful, often intimidating leader could accept bad news and change his mind.  The story focuses on a young engineer, Dick Heppe, challenging Johnson's view on the design of a plane's tail.  

"Heppe was in awe of Kelly, who was already, by this point, 'a legend' to young engineers like him.  And suddenly he had to sit in front of the man himself and tell him that he needed to make his plane's tail much larger. 'I was, frankly, trembling in my boots,' Heppe recalled.  Kelly did not dismiss the young engineer or get angry at him for bearing bad news.  He listened, asked questions - prodding for mistakes - and then accepted Heppe's conclusion.  

'It's a bitter pill,' Kelly said, 'but you're right.' 

He assigned an engineer, on the spot, to go redesign the tail. 'So that taught me the first lesson about Kelly,' Heppe recalled, 'which was that, if you knew what you were doing and you can satisfy his probing to a reasonable degree, he would trust you.' 

This trait - that a confident, intimidating, often intractable genius could accept bad news, even from underlings - instilled great confidence in his workers. Which only made them want to work more, and harder. 

The story speaks for itself.  Johnson did not dismiss Heppe.  He listened, asked questions, and remained open-minded despite his strong convictions.  He let the evidence speak.   Most of all, he demonstrated the type of curiosity that great leaders must exhibit.