a big movie buff and also have always been a big fan of all things outer space. Therefore, arguably one of my favorite movies of all time is "Apollo 13", but it is not just a great movie. Ron Howard directed the film starring Tom Hanks is one of the best dramatic picture of an organization managing a crisis to a successful outcome. One of the most important crisis lessons we learn is when the character played by actor Ed Harris succinctly summarizes the attitude you must have during a crisis. Harris portrayed Mission Control director Gene Kranz. At an important juncture in the crisis, Harris as Kranz says these words: “failure is not an option.” While everything around you is seemingly going wrong, you cannot allow any thoughts of failure to enter your minds or the minds of anyone in your organization. Crises are survivable. How well you survive will depend on how prepared you are before the crisis hits. The Crisis starts when the craft was successfully launched toward the Moon, but two days after launch, a faulty oxygen tank exploded, and the Service Module became damaged, causing a loss of oxygen and electrical power. There was a very big chance that the astronauts would die before they could return to Earth. Gene Kranz took charge, and over the course of the crisis, …show more content…
For every impossible situation, his response is simple, we need to find a way to make it work. What Kranz is trying to do is to remove the pessimism at that moment. He actually battled against pessimism. Ground crew members warned “we’re losing it,” “we’re going down” and “we are at a point of losing everybody and everything.” Kranz quickly and firmly put an end to the pessimism. He tells his team “let’s everybody keep cool, let’s solve the problem.” He was clear in his expectation that “we don’t concede failure” and “we will never