Ground Control to Major Tom...

When I was growing up, summers were a magical time when just about anything could happen: roller coasters, fireworks, concerts, making the perfect s'more, backyard wiffle ball games and yeah, sometimes there were "unanticipated consequences."

My mom used to say, “it’s not summer until someone goes to the emergency room (usually it was me).”

The summer when I turned five was just about the most miraculous summer ever. That was the summer when the astronauts of Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Come on, there’s nothing bigger than that, right?

I was absolutely captivated by the whole idea of astronauts and space, and I had all kinds of “space toys,” including my own space helmet. I even changed my “favorite number” to 11 (Hey, I was five, I didn’t know that many numbers yet). Actually, it’s still a fascination for me.

In September 1962, seven years before the lunar landing, President Kennedy spoke at Rice University and famously said:

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

In other words, JFK was saying:

• ?We have a goal, an amazingly lofty goal.
• ?We are going to accomplish it in the next seven years, and
• We know it will be difficult, beyond difficult but, we are the people to do it.

This was no “fake it ‘til you make it” proposition. NASA had been established in 1958. The Soviet Union sent Sputnik into orbit in 1957 and people everywhere were in a panic about the ramifications of having a satellite flying around “watching” everything below. The U.S. launched Explorer 1 a year later so the “space race” was on. Nothing like that good, old-fashioned American competitiveness.

JFK’s statement really kicked the space program into high gear.

What JFK’s speech looks like to me is a business plan. Granted, business strategy is what I do so just about everything looks like a business plan – but just stay with me, OK?

JFK’s statement had the three elements of a good business plan. If you’ve read these newsletters or heard me talk?ad nauseum?about this topic, you know that a business plan needs to address three basic questions:

1.?????What is the VISION? In this context, “vision” is not something like “I wonder if I can make money at this” or “if you build it, they will come.” I call these “solutions in search of a problem.”

Ironically, early success can be a false indicator.

Try this idea on for size; I make a product, an app, a something, and the three people in the whole galaxy that have use for it beat a path to my door. I might mistake this early “traction” for true market demand. So be careful. Do your homework and avoid shiny objects.

2.?????How will the vision be carried out? This doesn’t have to lay out what will happen three years from next Tuesday, but it needs to be some sort of clear, logical, cogent progression for how we get from A to B to C and so on. Sending a beach ball into orbit is one thing; sending humans to the moon is another.

It's really important to remember is that a plan needs to evolve because the environment in which an entity operates is constantly evolving.

The astronauts were “off-course” most of the time and had to constantly execute some super complex maneuvers, TONS of them, just to keep from hurtling off into space, missing the moon, or bouncing off the Earth’s atmosphere.

3.?????Are we the right people to do it? This is a tricky one. To JFK’s point, how do we know what we can accomplish if we don’t try? But there are certain indicators that help to answer this question.

Something I see a lot is a team that is made up entirely of “very senior” people who have decades of experience. Where the idea sort of falls apart is when actual work needs to get done and none of these folks have done any “hands-on” work in years and years. I call this “management disassociation.”

So when you look up at the stars, every one of which is another solar system’s “sun” (i.e., WAY father than Pluto) or look up at the moon, think about what it took to figure out what, where, when and how some really smart, dedicated people figured out how to explore and answer the really really big questions. You don’t do that without a plan.

Now, here are some words of wisdom from people who aren’t me:

“Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival. Not only does that get people interested in sciences and all the related fields, [but] it transforms the culture into one that values science and technology, and that's the culture that innovates.” –?Neil DeGrasse Tyson

“The stars don’t look bigger, but they do look brighter” –?Sally Ride

“The object of all work is production and there must be forethought, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.” –?Thomas Edison

Be good, be well, and stay humble and kind,

Tony