Welcome And Columbia Context

Tom Mueller 0:07

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. On this podcast, we share stories from the front lines of crisis management to interviews, storytelling, and lessons learning. On this episode, we're continuing our conversation with James Hartsfield, who recently retired from NASA as director of communications at the Johnson Space Center. James has been talking to us about the crash of the space shuttle Columbia back in 2003 and is just starting to touch on the sensitive issue of announcing crew fatalities or that the crew had perished in the crash. Let's rejoin that conversation now.

Staying Focused And Protecting Credibility

Fast Statements And Press Conference Prep

James Hartsfield 0:51

I'm going to go back to one thing on contingency too, is I I said where we last had communications with Columbia. We knew Columbia did not land in Florida. There was a big crowd there, and everybody knew it didn't show up when it was supposed to, so you know it's gone. But I couldn't really, I I could not acknowledge and I would not acknowledge uh that we had lost the crew um per se in direct communications because uh NASA knew and and we knew right along that that would be something that would the loss of a crew would be announced by the White House, not by NASA. So we would not do that. And and certainly when I went into that first uh team meeting, which was right down the hall from the control room, um, and was listening and and working in there and listening to all the the planning as they were pulling together, the efforts to go uh handle the debris situation and everything that was gonna go on and then and starting uh all that they needed to do then. Um they paused that meeting because there's televisions up in the corners of the room and and uh you know you never did this in a meeting, but they paused the meeting and they turned up the sound of intelligence because it was uh it was the president coming on to acknowledge the loss of the crew, you know. Very really difficult. Wow, that happened really quickly then, didn't it? It did. It I mean it had to, right? Um it it seems to me like it happened in about uh a matter of seconds, you know. It wasn't that, it was it was a couple hours really. Yeah. Um but um stayed focused on the job, right? That was the one thing we were definitely always been trained to stay focused on the job. We had a job to do. Our job was to be calm, to get information out because it the public safety depended on it, because NASA's transparency depended on it, and and I will say this too about crisis communications is the most precious thing you have in a crisis situation is your um integrity and your credibility. And if you compromise those, you're gonna be helpless. You're gonna be helpless going forward, you know. So the way you do that, um, at least at NASA, um, is transparency and some immediacy about being transparent, you know. You can a first impression is everything. You can lose your integrity and credibility in your first impression, and you can never get it back for years, you know, uh in my experience.

Tom Mueller 3:17

So James, was it pretty easy to turn statements around quickly, get things approved, get them going, or were you really focused on press conference prep then?

Challenger Lessons And The Cost Of Silence

James Hartsfield 3:28

The initial ones easy because they were really uh uh if you look at them back there, you'll see that they're just uh restating what I said on console of uh that uh where Columbia was at the time, and then it's talking about debris and the hazards of debris and what to do. You know, it took a little bit to get together a phone number and a place that if you see debris, where to report it, because we wanted people to do that. Um so the initial statement's pretty pretty easy. We didn't really put out anything else in that until we got to the press conference. So, and and there were other people on the team that were working those statements. I'd already done my part by being in the control room with that, right? Um, so I was then at that point focused on uh helping prepare for the press conference, which uh which was gonna happen. Uh one of the things that happened with uh NASA that made Challenger and Columbia very different, from my understanding. I wasn't there for for Challenger, but you know, I worked with a lot of people that went through it and I heard so much about how it went, and and then I was there, of course, with Columbia integral to it. Um, is that uh that if you looked at the communications plans, the crisis communications plans for both of those, yeah, very, very similar. Very similar. They they really followed the same lines of immediacy, openness, transparency, delegation of authority to lower levels, this kind of thing. But what happened in Challenger is uh the leadership in place immediately threw that out the window. And uh they clammed up. And why they did that, uh, you know, I I'm not gonna second guess on it right, but uh of course it was a totally stunning thing, but it was stunning at Columbia 2, but it was a stunning thing there because NASA had never had anything like that occur. They'd have lost Apollo 1 fire, but that was a different situation. Um but stunning, of course, anytime at NASA, anything that happens, you know, we're all coworkers and friends, and there's a you're close to the people that are affected that that you lose. You know, there's there's grief that you're feeling at the same time that you're working through things, which probably is true of many crisis situations. So um all of for whatever reasons they threw it out the window, and it immediately was I uh what I'll say is like first impression, and within a I think a matter of a day, it was in shatters NASA's credibility. Every the press didn't think they would get anything genuine out of NASA for Challenger. There was an adversarial relationship set up right away, which is a horrible thing, you know. Columbia, absolutely different, right? The leadership of the agency entrusted the plan. Uh they went forward with it, they entrusted people who were at areas of responsibility to execute it. I was there working on those points for that first press conference right away. Um, and I did get a note in uh that came from Washington saying they wanted to see every single thing I gave them for talking, uh gave to Ron for talking points. They wanted to see them before I gave them to Ron. There wasn't gonna be time to do that. I mean, I was familiar with when you send things there, you don't get it back for hours. And and so I I passed back to them, I said I can't do it. I just know that I'm gonna tell him to say everything he knows, you know, because that that's what I was gonna do, right? And and that's what I did. I said, say everything you know. We talked about the phone, we talked about, but you know, they didn't know for sure that that was what had caused the the that was gonna take some time to figure that out as a possibility, right? But it was counterintuitive what they had analyzed.

Tom Mueller 6:59

And I told him Was that kind of a tense moment where you push back on headquarters about uh sending materials?

James Hartsfield 7:06

Well, they couldn't really they couldn't really reach me to gripe about it. I was in the secure area in the room, so I didn't feel any tension at that point, Tom, because my day had already been tense enough that there was nothing going to make me more tense, you know. Might have been tense for somebody else, you know.

Trusting The Plan Through Group Practice

Tom Mueller 7:24

But following the plan is just a huge issue and concern for you know for NASA, obviously, but for any company that has a crisis plan. It's there for a reason. You need to be familiar with it, you need to practice it.

Empathy And Better Talking Points

The Personal Weight Of That Day

James Hartsfield 7:40

And then absolutely you you need to you need to trust it. I mean, that's the bottom line. Now, what does it take to build up trust? It takes it actually takes developing it not alone. When you develop it, develop as as a group that includes leadership to the top of the company, you know? Because nobody trusts anything that they don't have a part in creating. I mean, I guess they do, but but they're gonna trust it better if they have a part in creating it, right? Um, and so it starts there, it goes on with uh with certainly practicing it. And when you practice it, and this was key with Columbia, is that NASA had not always done this, but but uh for whatever reason uh we had started uh a while before the Columbia accident took place, we had started doing um practice sessions that actually included uh leadership of the agency and leadership of programs. And so very specifically, there was one that uh I was in with uh the shuttle program management um that was not long before Columbia. I don't know exactly how far away it was, maybe six months, maybe less, but uh it was a practice session done like I explained how simulations happen where you have crew members in a in a simulator, you have mission control. So it was all up elaborate and a contingency scenario. And uh they don't they didn't do practice sessions that included a loss of the crew because that was viewed as negative training. If if you put people into a situation that they cannot escape from, you're not teaching them anything, you know. Okay. So this one was a situation where the shuttle had a problem on landing and crash land and the crew was injured. And I was in the back room, I wasn't on console for that. We had somebody else on the console, but I was on the back room and I was standing next to shuttle program management and constantly talking to them about we need to say this, can we say that? We're gonna have to talk about the crew's injuries. How can we do this? And I had the the medical person over here and the shuttle program management over there was a team working there, and we all worked through on that. We needed to say things, some things you can't say because of privacy concerns, because of respect for all various things. Um, but um, but that was just invaluable to have had that kind of close because everybody took it serious. We were all going to be graded by these devilish sim supervisors, you know, that we talked about at the end, and you didn't want a bad grade, you know. So it was uh it was invaluable to the real time, you know. I will say the other points on on Ron that I I gave him that first day um was to to let people know how we felt, how he felt too, which is hard for an engineer, right? I think a lot of people are very um stoic, you know. Um but uh but he did that and bring that empathy out, right? Well, they feel it, they feel it, they don't want to show it, you don't want to share it with the world, and I get that. And and I don't think, you know, I think that's normal, that's human, and and uh I respect that feeling, but but um it it can be interpreted as not having any feelings, you know. So you're feeling it, you need to let them know. And he he did a very dignified job with that. He used the word which was so perfect, which I didn't give him that word. He he got that devastated that we are devastated, you know. I just told him and then I told him to uh you know, we talked about East Texas and how to recover and where to go for recoveries. Now, when I give him talking points, I'd had a long working relationship with him for a couple of years before that, along with a lot of other program managers before he was a program manager. They're all different. Every leader you work with, right, is always different. Um, but uh he was of a sort where he was very good with the media and with press conferences, um, and he really wanted good points, right? He wanted good points and he wanted good preparation, but he called talking points uh his word for them were thought provokers, which is a wonderful way to look at talking points because I don't want anybody ever to use points I give them verbatim, you know? Um they don't sound genuine that way, and they're not and I'm not an expert. I'm I'm not I mean I may be an expert on some things, but I'm not as much of an expert at the technical as they will ever be at all. Um so a thought provoker is the perfect way to look at it, right? And that's how he said he viewed them all. And that came across all the time in how he he answered things now. He found them super valuable and he insisted on having them and he used them, but uh you could hear that he uh you could hear it when you were the person working with him and how he interpreted it. It was just really, really good. So it worked well for the agency in that instance in terms of communications um to do that. I I will say, you know, that day then I I'd been up for like 12 hours, so I didn't I didn't uh I mean it's just a couple of things about the day that are weird is that um uh Columbia, I told you get ready for it, it was gonna come across Continental US. Um just by craziness, it was its track was going right across my hometown where I grew up, uh, you know, my whole uh the 18 years, Walks a hatchet.

Tom Mueller 12:49

Waxa hatching.

James Hartsfield 12:50

Yes. It's going right above it. And um, and so that was rare. And I sent my mom an email the day before and called her to say, you know, hey, you get up and 8 a.m. You make sure you watch it. And she, you know, mom, mom is your favorite fan, right? She recorded everything I ever did on TV. I still have stacks of EHS tapes and all this stuff. But unusually she slept in that day. She was gonna get up, but she ended up sleeping in and she missed it, and I'm so glad she did. Because that's actually right about where it broke apart. Um, and then I will say the other thing is that uh after I got the points ready and we did prep for the press conference, um, they asked me if I wanted to moderate that press conference, and that would have been the full circle, right? But I'd been up for like 14 hours or something by that time um at work. Um I'd gotten there at midnight or something, and uh I was pretty emotionally drained, so I I deferred and asked other people to do it, and uh and I had to get away. So I actually listened to that first press conference from a sonic drive-in um in my car because I I needed someplace where nobody was around me and nobody knew anything that had happened to me that day, and I could just listen to it, you know. The ensuing days for the next week, we had a press conference a day, and it kind of followed that same scenario of uh of preparing points. But what uh did was we pulled together a little group um where we would have a uh couple of folks responsible for uh analyzing all the press clippings that had happened over the past 24 hours, pulling them together, summarizing them, what kind of weird questions were we getting from the press, what kind of rumors were taken off, what kind of speculation was happening, all of that, put it together in a package. Um we would uh we would have what we'd heard about how the investigation and the debris recovery was going, we would pull that together some, and we would all uh about three or four of us go in and meet with uh with the program management at about 8 a.m. in the morning of that day. And we would give them that information. We would have a preliminary discussion about what that day might be like for the press conference. Um, then we would they would give us some things early on that we might want to do, and if there were some materials that we thought we needed to pull together for the press conference in terms of uh visuals or show and tell items, we would get that. Um then we would go off and and work on some of that. We would come back together with a more complete set of the thought provokers, the talking points and the prep materials, and meet uh about an hour before the press conference. So usually I think it was about two o'clock because they were usually in the afternoon, three or so, and uh finalize things. And sometimes there's late changes and stuff, and uh, and then we'd have the press conference, and that that would work pretty well, right? And we did that for the first week um doing that.

Media Prep When Time Is Scarce

Tom Mueller 15:45

James, just a question for you on your preparation process there. Were were you able to get the whoever the principal was for that press conference ahead of time and actually practice doing QA and give them some real rehearsal time, or did you not?

James Hartsfield 16:02

Well, well, so they that's a training, right? And they had had media training. We everyone had had media training, right? So they didn't necessarily need the basic training. We would go over the specifics of what the media may ask and what they were gonna ask and and the messaging that that they needed to get across, you know, and the new developments that were happening here and there. And and so it wasn't necessarily practice Q ⁇ A back and forth, it was more discussion of uh letting them know the media perspective and how they're gonna receive certain things. And if they gave us an answer, we might say, you know, you you you want to alter that a little bit, maybe modify it a little to because they're not gonna understand it clearly that way. Um, you know. Yep. And uh, but not not so much a practice training thing. That needs to happen. I that to me, if you have the time to do that, that would be a good luxury in that scenario where we were doing a press conference every day, and the management is really busy managing a huge situation, a crisis situation that's like a the amount of time we got with them was amazing. Don't think we would have gotten the time to really expand it to that far, you know. Right.

Tom Mueller 17:14

Well, that's a challenge we see in most incidents, is you know, and even in a bunch of exercises that I've been a part of, the public affairs team will take some talking points and as the incident commander's heading into the press conference room, hand them the talking points.

James Hartsfield 17:30

Oh, we didn't do that. No, we we had a uh a good meeting with them where we taught, and I guess that was two meetings a day, really, um, to prepare for it. And uh and of course, it's not like these were the people doing the press conference had done tons of media previous to Columbia, right? And had also done media training previous to this. So they were not inexperienced. I don't think I would put an inexperienced media communicator in that scenario, you know. Um whether they're the whether they're the actual um management person that maybe would tell you should go there if they are not experienced with media, that's not the good place to go gain that experience, you know.

Tom Mueller 18:19

Um not under the harsh lights of a crisis. No, you do not want to be learning the ropes at that point.

Transparency When Risk Is The Mission

James Hartsfield 18:25

Yeah. And and so that for about a week we did that, and and I I will I do feel, and and a lot of the studies that have looked at uh the communications from Columbia and also compared it to Challenger, you know, that was a key, those first ones a key in setting the tone for how it was received, right? The the um you know, the world has a lot of empathy, um, had a lot of empathy for NASA. I don't know that that would happen everywhere, right? But a lot of empathy for NASA. They I love the saying at NASA is uh pushing the edge of the envelope, you know. They did that on Artemis 2. That envelope, they they went further than people have ever been, they went faster than people have ever gone. That's the envelope edges that they're pushing, you know. And when you're pushing the edge of that envelope, you're gonna have accidents. There'll be more accidents in the future, I hate to say it, but there will be. It's the price of progress sometimes, no matter how much and you try to not have it. Um, people they do understand that. I don't know that they're really forgiving, but they empathize. Um, and uh but you can ruin that by acting emotionless, you can ruin it by destroying your integrity.

Tom Mueller 19:37

And that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast. Special thanks to James Hartsfield for joining us. We're going to continue our conversation with James on the next episode. So please tune in to hear additional stories from the front lines of crisis communications in the space.