INVENTING THE FUTURE

Transforming Corporate Culture with Inspiration, Insight, and a Story

Rod Pyle

I was recently invited as an expert guest for an intimate gathering of C-suite aerospace leaders at one of their quarterly strategy meetings. The gathering was organized by Jeff Boyd of Operation Explore and held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The team was assigned to pre-read my 2019 book Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA, and International Partners are Creating a New Space Age to stimulate deeper thinking about their future. The company, Click Bond Inc., has worked with Operation Explore for several years on their very forward-looking strategy.

Ideas from “Space 2.0” were embedded in a day-long discussion on the future of spaceflight, with a special emphasis on the emergence of the entrepreneurial sector. This ignited an examination of how Click Bond’s leadership views innovation and the company’s place in the future of aerospace. In essence: what is going to be their story moving ahead? How can we learn from the stories of spaceflight’s past? The concept of story—both the one we tell ourselves and those intended for the marketplace—was an important part of our conversation.

During the lunch break, Jeff split the ten participants into two groups to discuss the future direction of the company. The deceptively simple question was: What is Click Bond 2.0? My group organized their conversation around a particular product line that looms large in the company’s future plans—a worthy discussion, but one of limited scope. I listened and learned much about their strategic vision—always a critical component of such meetings—but felt something was missing. After about 15 minutes, one of the participants turned and said, “What do you think, Rod?” I got up and walked about ten feet to the right of the flip chart that was being used to outline their near-term ideas and said: “I want you to think further out and envision an aerospace engineering student 50 years in the future. She’s reviewing the history of aerospace innovation, and Click Bond comes up in her augmented reality contact lenses. What does she see? What do you want to be remembered for? What pivotal product or achievement of yours changed everything? What will your story be?” These suggestions embraced their current strategic thinking but encouraged a long-view of innovation and completely changed the course of the conversation.

There is great power in storytelling. How we view our own story—whether as an individual innovator or as a part of a larger team—can change how we evolve our brand. And a story well told is addressed first to the emotional mind, and can then take root in our rational left brain, growing into something multifaceted and empowering. Storytelling can be a challenge for engineers and scientists who have trained hard their entire lives to think in quantitative terms, however. The “soft art” of relating their story to each other—and even to themselves—can be difficult to master. But countless studies of the type I participated in as a graduate student at Stanford—in particular, one experiment led by a transformative thinker named Peter Orton, who became the Program Director of Global Curriculum Technology at IBM—indicate that expressing our experiences and vision with storytelling can propel traditional thinking towards a revolutionary future.

Later that day, I led the group on a tour of Johnson Space Center, visiting the Apollo Mission Control Room and the Saturn V rocket. Viewing these historic sites is a profound experience—especially when their deeper context is explored—and we discussed how appreciation of these past accomplishments can inspire future achievements.

At that moment, I was struck once again by the potential of such collaborations, when open-minded leadership invites thinkers from outside their immediate corporate culture into the conversation. I was talking with some of the finest minds in their industry—the leadership of Click Bond has been carefully selected for excellence in the field—who had the foresight and curiosity to seek outside thinkers. This sounds like an obvious strategy but is not always pursued with this kind of vigor.

Jeff provided context for a closing “unplugged” session, where the team could ask me anything they wished. One question addressed the potentially dull topic of space infrastructure (the focus of chapter 14 in Space 2.0), which eventually led to a very dynamic discussion relevant to Click Bond’s interests. Orbital and cislunar infrastructure will ultimately change everything.

I’ve written 17 books and countless articles on spaceflight and related technologies, and while I am not a trained engineer, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with and learn from hundreds of visionaries in the industry, including senior executives from the Apollo program, leaders of such innovative companies as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and hundreds of engineers and scientists. I’ve also spent time with heavy hitters in the newspace financial community, from individual billionaire investors to those running major newspace funds. The high-value thinking of these individuals has coalesced into a soaring, yet immensely practical—and potentially quite profitable—vision of the future. When this perspective is shared with the incisive minds from a company like Click Bond, it can result in new and powerful perspectives on ourselves, our team, and the future we build together.

I encourage corporate leaders to take time from tactical planning and spreadsheets to create similar events. When properly planned and well-executed, the results can be transformative for your leadership team. Give your key people time to step back from immediate tasks. Challenge them to leave the comfortable surroundings of their work environment. Invite them to peer into the future... and to dream. Your team will return energized and empowered to inspire your workforce and chart an exciting and revolutionary course into tomorrow. As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “Dare mighty things.” It all starts with your story.

Rod Pyle is the author of 17 books on spaceflight and technology and is the Editor-in-Chief of Ad Astra magazine for the National Space Society. He has written for the California Institution of Technology, WIRED, the BBC, SpaceNews, Space.com and other space-related outlets. Rod co-created the Apollo Executive Leadership Program, a collaboration of the Johnson Space Center and The Conference Board, and has written senior-level reports for NASA. He keynotes for and consults with aerospace companies and organizations including IBM, BAE Systems, Ecolab and others.