Finding the Rocket Scientist in You

Intro

Appealing title. Appealing character. Appealing profession.

When you come across a book like "Think Like a Rocket Scientist", by Ozan Varol - a real rocket scientist, with planetary sciences degree and some work history with the NASA - you have to stop and at least glance over a few pages.

But if you are thinking like a rocket scientist, you go beyond titles. Beyond characters.

You ask real good questions, like, "should I invest my time into reading this?". The answer you get here in my newsletter - without having to read the entire book to get there.

Although my coding skills didn't help me get dates, they would prove to be crucial later in life

That's it. Shortening the paths, just like a rocket scientist would do!

What this Book is NOT

Let's start with some good news, because the title of the book can be as appealing as it can be scary! In one simple phrase: you CAN read this book.

There is nothing like advanced science or math being described here, and the author is not assuming you to be already a rocket scientist before you read this.

Neither is this book about planets or rockets or things happening exclusively out of space, things that you would eventually not be that much of your interest.

One connection, though, that the author makes very often: the relevance of thinking like a rocket scientist for a better life on earth! You would be surprised, or not, with the amount of inventions we use on our day to day that came from rocket science:

• ??? GPS (Global Positioning System): GPS relies on satellites launched into space by rocket scientists and has since become essential for navigation in smartphones, cars, and aviation.
• ???Memory Foam: Originally developed by NASA in the 1960s to improve the safety of aircraft cushions, memory foam is now widely used in mattresses, pillows, and protective gear.
• ?? Portable Computers: The first portable computers were developed to assist astronauts with calculations in space. These have evolved into the laptops and tablets we use today.
• ?? LED Technology: NASA initially developed LED technology for plant growth experiments in space. LEDs are now widely used in energy-efficient lighting and display screens.
• ?? Freeze-Dried Foods: Designed to provide astronauts with nutritious, lightweight food in space, freeze-drying has become a common method of preserving food for camping, emergency rations, and even snacks.

You will find many of those stories, and more, in the book. That always gives perspective!

Launching, Accelerating and Achieving

So, that's how a rocket scientist actually thinks!

No, it is not. But it is the structure followed by the book, helping the reader with a framework to develop ideas that deliver results.

I guess some people in business talking about moonshots read this book, because that's where the launch stage starts.

(...) we can say that people made a classic mistake: trying to make something appear definite when in fact it isn't.

That's where such moonshots start: around uncertainty. Can you think about that means, when you see executives talking about repeated execution of programs that are already existing and successfully deployed all over the place as "moonshots"?

Or what it means to have very clearly measurable KPIs and ROI associated with it?

That's just not it. As Ozan provides us with dozens of examples, he makes the case that the first requirement to think like a rocket scientist is to be comfortable with not knowing. With being imprecise. Even ambiguous. That's not where it ends, but it is where it starts.

The moonshot implies... you will live in a dark room, for a while.

I find it comforting that there isn't a theory of everything

In order to live with such uncertainty, what do rocket scientists do? They ensure there is enough - and only enough - redundancy available (as we say in finance, don't but all eggs in the same basket). They define and respect margins of safety. And they use reasoning from first principles!

Simple, right? There are loads of cool stories in the book that illustrate how this has been done, as well as not to do it. By the way, this is one of these books that leverages multiple different stories to illustrate the points, and while some stories are repetitive, they are mostly engaging and interesting.

Moving next into accelerate, once you have your ideas developed, you are ready to challenge status quo, you embraced uncertainty while building resilience, it is time to start getting some concrete results. This may be a very challenging phase.

Why is that? Because you should be challenging it yourself.

When you see a good move, don't make it immediately. Look for a better one

Maybe one of the very best stories in the book, the decision of sending two rovers to Mars (named Spirit and Opportunity - nice!) came from a very simple question while the scientists were planning for the next trip after a first fail.

It was not the scope of the discussion. No one ever thought about sending two.

And it just because they did it, and they decided to land each on a different part of the planet, they made the most wonderful discoveries with the second rover, not the first (plus points for them as both of them worked, though).

That is what acceleration means. You have your ideas, you challenge yourself to move them to the next level. To find a much better option. To pioneer.

Think about testing, too. In his chapter "Test as You Fly, Fly as You Test" the author defends the parallelism of the activities as waiting for everything to be 100% ready... means waiting forever. And trusting that tests will be thorough and find issues is naive, as most testing is designed to confirm our thoughts, not to challenge them. That can be prevented by keeping things real, again with proper safety margins and redundancies, making the case for Agile working and accelerating development.

Test as you fly (...) and you'll soon begin to soar

Now you have everything ready: idea developed AND accelerated. What does achieving mean?

It simply means gathering the results, putting that idea to work, following principles that reminded myself again very much of Agile working. But sometimes, very opposite ideas to those.

Let's use this one as an example: failing fast. While it has become almost a mantra in business, Ozan writes it very clearly:

The fail-fast mantra has no place in rocket science.

That is understandable in rocket science. It may got very expensive and life-threatening dangerous. But what about in general business? The author's case is that the failing fast becomes a distraction. The "celebrating failure" culture comes in the way of feeling the pain of that failure, that is associated with real and effective learning (yes, that's true: pain can be a very effective teacher, but is it the only way?).

To sustain that point of view, he mentions a study done in the USA that indicated the following: the rate of success for first-time entrepreneurs is very similar to the rate of success for entrepreneurs who previously failed. Then he suggested yet another research on American surgeons suggesting that those performed worse after making significant mistakes.

Little interruption in the summary for two opinions: first, both researches are very weak to be used as a support to such bold statement. One of the biggest problems is that it doesn't consider enough variables, and it doesn't address the question "how were eventual learnings incorporated the new endeavors". It's also culture specific, lacking diversity, which could easily explain the results.

The second point: I actually agree with him from an observed reality perspective. My experience with "celebrating failure" has been that it creates a shield against difficult conversations, it makes learning way harder and it supports the development and growth of certain behaviors that are not in the best interest of the business or the community.

Probably what I mean to say is, this space brings opportunities for further research.

There is though another research in that section of the book that explains how better teams can be perceived as making more mistakes, because better teams are better at admitting and reporting mistakes - which links back to psychological safety.

There's another component to psychological safety. If employees are to share their mistakes, the leaders must do the same.

Observations

Occam's razor. The Schr?dinger Cat. Sunk-cost fallacy.

And everything else I discussed above. You can see a trend.

It is a repetition, a summary of many other books, spiced up by some (not all) rocket science stories. Because of such repetition, I am skeptical to fully recommend the book, so let me try to articulate it better:

• Easy of reading: 4 stars. It's nothing special but it delivers it's promise well. Good structure, easy to follow and that foundation with the three stages helps navigating well through the pages.
• Learning something new: 2 stars. Some of the stories were new to me, but I will discuss that in the next point. From content perspective I was rather surprise not to find anything radically new. Even some concepts, like "don't work to fail fast, but to learn fast" may appear as being rebel at first, but feels more like semantics later.
• Interesting and Engaging: 3 stars. I wished to read even more stories of rocket science, and not Apple or something else that is already in many other books and over the news. That said, the stories picket are interesting and got me engaged with the book until the end.

If you wouldn't have read the book or this summary...

how would you define a rocket scientist thinking?