In 1979, ISRO's first satellite launch failed due to fuel leakage in the second stage. Project Head Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Chairman Prof. Satish Dhawan owned the failure publicly, promised success within a year, and delivered it in August 1980. Dhawan taught Kalam that leaders take blame for failures and credit the team for wins.
Congratulations everyone on the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3. It is such a pride moment for all of us, and like everyone, I want to congratulate the team ISRO for doing an amazing work. And on this Thursday, I'm launching something new. I'm launching something called Thursday Tales, where every Thursday I will come live on Facebook and I'll also put the videos on other platform to share one inspiring tale. And with all the context going on with the Chandrayaan, I thought of sharing this amazing tale of two leaders of Indian Space Research Organization which took them to the heights that they have this. And those two leaders are late Professor Dr. Satish Dhawan and our ex-president, late Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. This is the story about satellite launch vehicle. The first time satellite launch vehicle happened in 1980s, 1979 to be precise. So the story goes like this. It was July of 1979. Dr. Kalam was the Project Head of the Satellite Launch Vehicle, while Dr. Satish Dhawan was the ISRO Chairman. The whole team of Dr. Kalam had been working for a decade on launching India's its own satellite launch vehicle, and it was this moment that they had been working for day in, day out. And the day came. It was July of 1975. 9, the countdown started. T-minus 8 minutes, T-minus 6 minutes, T-minus 4 minutes. It was only less than a minute ago when the computer prompted, there is a problem with the vehicle. They looked at Dr. Kalam, asked the expert, and said, there is a leakage in the fuel, but we have enough fuel, so we can bypass. Dr. Kalam trusted the team and bypassed the computer, and the satellite was launched. The first phase went fine, but in the second phase, it went crazy and ended up getting into the way of Bengaluru. That was a major embarrassment for the whole India as well. The whole media of the world was watching it. They were ridiculing it. And next day there was a press conference was to be done. At that time, Dr. Satish Dhawan came to Dr. Kalam and said, come on, let's go for the press conference. Dr. Kalam was very scared. What is he going to show the media? What is he going to tell And then Dr. Satish Dhawan took over and he said, dear friends, we have failed today, but I have faith in my team and I am very confident by this time next year we will be successfully launching the satellite launch vehicle. The media was not easy on them. Next day, the newspaper headlines were, "Hundreds of crore dumped into the Bay of Bengal by ISRO." The team started working, they fixed the problems, and it was next year, August of 1980. This time everything went smooth and the satellite launch vehicle was huge success. Now Professor Dhawan again came to Dr. Kalam and said, Kalam, the press is waiting outside, and you know, you know the facts better than I do. Please go and do the press conference. And this was the biggest leadership lesson that was told by Dr. Kalam in many media interviews. And he said this is what he learned from Dr. Dhawan, that when the failure occurs, the leaders own the failure, they lead from the front. But when the success come, all the glory comes, they pass the credit to the team. I have found this story very inspiring. I have shared it multiple times. I hope you also found this story story useful. Do share in the comments what did you like about the story, and do tell me if you want me to continue sharing this Thursday Tale. I hope to bring more inspiring stories to you every Thursday in the form of Thursday Tale. Until next time, as I say every time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep going out of your comfort zone. This is Coach Haritosh Srivastav. I hope to see you next week.
