What Do You Do When Your Plan Is No Longer Possible? You've probably heard the words: “Failure is not an option.” They are usually connected to Gene Kranz, one of NASA's flight directors during Apollo 13. Here's something I didn't know for a long time. Gene Kranz never actually said those words during Apollo 13. They were written for the 1995 movie Apollo 13, where Ed Harris played him. The real story gives us plenty to talk about without needing the movie line. Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970, with Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise headed for the Moon. On April 13, an oxygen tank in the spacecraft's service module exploded. Just like that, the mission they had spent years preparing for was gone. They weren't landing on the Moon. Now they had to get home. This is where Gene Kranz and the people in Mission Control interest me. Think about how easy it would have been to stay attached to the original mission. All that preparation. All that money. All those people involved. Years of work. And now you have to accept that the goal everyone worked toward is no longer the goal. I've seen leaders struggle with this. Not with a spacecraft, obviously, but with a plan they have invested too much into to want to let it go. Sometimes we keep pushing because we believe perseverance is what leaders are supposed to do. Sometimes it is, but sometimes leadership is recognizing that the situation has changed and having the courage to change with it. Kranz and the teams at NASA still had incredibly difficult decisions ahead of them. They had to conserve power, solve problems they had never expected to face and work together to bring three astronauts back to Earth. They did. Apollo 13 returned safely on April 17. What stays with me is that they didn't accomplish the mission they originally set out to accomplish. But I don't think anyone would call Apollo 13 a leadership failure. So here's what I'm curious about. How do you know when staying committed to the plan is perseverance, and when it has become stubbornness?

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