Lessons from Apollo 13

Dear CEO

We have known for a while that we live in strange times of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

Just a few months ago, none of us could have imagined the economic chaos brought home by this unprecedented lockdown to control the spread of COVID-19.

Even before this situation, many of us were trying to understand the implications and map the logical shifts into a new kind of economic and political world that was already emerging. Now with this rapidly-changing landscape, three things are certain;

1. you will need to think and work differently to effectively navigate this crisis
2. the clearer your picture becomes, the more effective your responses will be
3. tactical fixes for mere survival are not enough in a world that will inevitably evolve to a very different ‘normal’ - with or without you

As hard as it may seem, this is actually your opportunity to raise your game and make you, your team and your business much stronger for now and for what’s to come. It’s hard work because it’s going to require a deeper level of understanding about all the pieces and dynamics in play and a higher level of mental agility than most of us were never trained for.

The hidden challenge is our mind’s default mode because it likes to latch on to the most convenient answers that make sense from our existing mental frameworks – the ideas that look like they will most quickly return things to order and ease our discomfort. The harsh reality is that turning up in a virtual space with the same attitudes, strategies and behaviours we had in our so-called BAU world is not enough to make this work.

You must resist jumping to convenient conclusions and take the time to see and understand what’s really going on for two reasons:

1. Because there are three interconnected human dimensions in play which we seldom have to consider when our context is relatively stable. When the context shifts, our WHAT, HOW & WHY has to adapt – starting from the inside out with e re-examination of our WHY.
2. If you don’t make the shift, you will likely become overwhelmed by a massive list of disconnected ideas and ineffective activities that might make you feel better but will hold you back from leveraging this profound opportunity.

 At the very moment you need to be creating the capacity to do more than just survive, you don’t need more information and hacks, you need more clarity.

It all reminds me of the Apollo 13 story

Their grand ambition with years of meticulous planning, highly skilled experts, uncompromising managers and brilliant execution in every field of endeavour was suddenly in jeopardy  - with life-threatening consequences that demanded a very different way of thinking in order to come through it.

Sound familiar?

All of a sudden the mission had changed from the glory of landing on the moon to the importance of bringing home the people who were 238,000 miles from earth.

They were battling on two fronts; to make sure the broken vehicle can be modified to save the people at the same time as leading the teams to self-modify their attitudes, behaviours and strategies to save the broken vehicle.

I particularly love the scene at the top of this article when the guy responsible for solving the oxygen problem makes things very simple for the team - “We have to make this (square carbon monoxide filter) fit into the hole made for this (round filter) using nothing but what we have on this table.” It’s not dissimilar here today. Luckily they had gaffa tape on the ship but there was much more to it than that.

There are a handful of lessons from Apollo 13 and I want to share them with you.

This is not going to be a shortlist of instant hacks because learning to see and think differently is a little trickier than that. But since the way we perceive and think is what ultimately drives our success, it's probably worth taking seriously.

It does contain some very practical applications for the ideas I want to share with you.

So grab a coffee or something stronger and let’s do some mind work together.

Lesson 1: Accept that information and intellect is not enough

The Apollo 13 team was made up of the leading minds of the day but their normal operating mode wasn’t good enough to solve this problem.

We are so deceived by the idea that intelligence is the determinant of success because in the linear and incremental context we all grew up in, it appears to be true. Get the qualification, to get the job, to do what you’ve trained for, to get the promotion, to get the rewards, to get the respect and happiness you deserve etc.

That’s not good enough in an uncertain landscape where the direction is unclear let alone how to get there. Thriving will not depend on whether you are clever enough to download the right information to fix the mountain of symptoms one by one. It will depend on whether you are curious enough to see how the whole thing works together with all its complex interdependencies and limitations.

You have to upgrade from a linear to a systemic way of thinking.

And since people make up 80% of the critical elements in play, it’s vital that you are aware of how human beings really work. That’s a massive undertaking but let’s simplify it down to the three human dynamics in play captured in the idea of WHY, HOW, WHAT.

Whether you realise it or not, what you do is born out of what you perceive to be the right way of doing things which is determined by your mind-set – i.e. why you see it that way.

By mind-set I mean your conscious and unconscious set of attitudes, beliefs, values, preferences, guiding principles, worldviews, philosophies, mental models, etc that, together, pre-determine how you interpret and respond to any and every situation.

Your mind-set is possibly the most important factor in play right now and being on autopilot is not a good mode in which to navigate a crisis.

Whether we like it or not, our brain is not just a computer on legs where the ones with the best data input and the fastest processing skills get the ‘correctest’ answers to a long list of sequential tactical problems.

We have come across a number of people in the last week who are just waiting for some industry authority to tell them what to do next and how the game works now. That’s not an intelligence problem. That’s a mind-set problem.

The challenge is much more complex and requires a more systemic and multi-dimensional way of seeing and thinking about all the pieces in play, what they are for, how they relate, why they matter and how to work them together for good.

If that all sounds a little too conceptual, that’s exactly the point.

Most of us have never self-examined the mental models that define how we interpret and respond to life and business. Why would we? We’ve been well-formatted to show us as performers in a well-established system. Despite the V.U.C.A. outlook, we have convinced ourselves that the business horizon just looked like more of the same incremental progress but with better tech. There seemed no reason to question our foundational maps of how life and the world actually works. Most of us still think like Newton rather than Einstein.

The truth is, this world-shaking circumstance has been on the horizon for some time and like fools, we have ignored it hoping for as little disruption as possible.

The challenge for all of us is that finding the most effective solutions means asking the best questions, which is powered by having already built the best set of mind tools.

The difference between Einstein and Newton is not that Albert had a better brain. He just chose to be more curious, which revealed deeper levels of truth, which produced better quality mental maps, that helped him ask better questions, that revealed even more powerful truths, that unlocked limitless possibility for our world.

Unless you have time to really study the true complexity of human consciousness and behaviours or the emerging challenges of behavioural economics, your best approach right now is to access the collective wisdom of other leaders who have already done that self-work and can help you challenge your assumptions, expose your blind-spots and create new and effective ways to navigate this very harsh and uncharted reality.

Practical application:

Check-out The CEO Growth Academy Rapid Response Team at the end of this article. We are currently gathering every Tuesday and Thursday at 8 o Clock UK time to help each other do exactly that.

Lesson 2: Engage your whole team in multi-dimensional joined-up thinking with a new and clearly defined goal

Another challenge for us is that we have fragmented intelligence into thousands of different subjects. You may have heard the definition of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

It’s not quite that bad in business but we have mentally carved up what are supposed to be inter-related elements into separate skills and functions called marketing, sales, product delivery, technology, human resources etc.

So many companies are a collection of cogs rather than a Swiss watch.

Our very mindset is betrayed by our language when we talk about ‘human resources’ as if they are just a thing and when we ask questions like “How do I get more out of my staff?” Good luck with that kind of thinking.

Of course, there are many elements in play and at least 80% relates to people when you consider the leadership, the team, the customers, the suppliers all working together to create value for others using agreed systems and processes. It’s more like an organism than a machine run by people. It’s more like an interdependent economic community than a hierarchy.

Right now it needs to be an adaptive collaborative creative community.

The Apollo 13 team’s response to their crisis turned out to be effective because they made two conscious choices.

Firstly they assembled a diverse team; diverse in their thinking.

There was the mathematicians and data guys, the rocket designers, the technical engineers and the astronaut whose job it was to understand the mechanics deeply enough to run the simulations until they found a workable solution. It wan’t about hierarchy. It was about different perspectives and insights and know-how that produced a much better strategy.

In other words, there is no single fix to your challenges but there are many things that can add up to a massive difference and it’s your whole team that will help you find the best adaptations. But you need to step up and lead differently and towards a different outcome.

The second important thing is that they articulated a new critical goal that wasn’t about just lowering the existing target.

Gene Kranz – the Chief Flight Director was the guy trusted with leading mission control because he truly understood the front-line context. As a former pilot, he had probably been in seemingly dire situations before. As someone who has been willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, he was the right guy to decide whether they were going to manage the fallout of a failed mission or redirect all the resources onto a new mission – to bring the team home.

Nobody would have criticised Gene for giving in to the brutal realities. That’s exactly what could have happened if he had just listened to the data guys or the designers or the engineers. Instead, he chose to be a leader who saw a different possibility worth fighting for. He found the creativity, courage and determination to believe in a new outcome and to change the mission to that new goal. He was able to navigate the team tensions by refusing to accept what appeared impossible to those who only saw the problem through their own specialist lens.

Practical application:

As a powerful exercise; whether you have a comprehensive business continuity plan or nothing written down; start with these three scenarios and work out how you could adapt your mindset, strategies and activities – starting with the worst-case scenario:

• ·Worst Case – This COVID-19 situation is just a prelude to the deepest depression in living memory. The global economy as we know it is completely destroyed as repeat lockdowns run on for years and business becomes all about creating value for the local community.
• Better Case – The pandemic is finally behind us by Christmas 2021 after a serious of false starts as a mass vaccine programme finally pushes back the virus threats and we can now begin to rebuild our businesses.
• Best Case – September 1st 2020 and Boris Johnson announces the all-clear as schools begin to reopen and we can all just about see a way of being profitable by year-end. Crisis! What crisis?

Whatever you discover as your response to the worst-case will likely help you best navigate the best case.

Now apply it to shorter range scenarios like running out of money in 30, 60, 90 days or a core team member becoming seriously ill or a client going bust or a key supplier/strategic partner closing their doors.

Make sure you discuss these potential issues with the whole team and learn fast how to hold the tension digging to find multiple solutions so you can pick the best one for your unique context.

More importantly, make sure you define a new and more profound goal for your company in a world where simply measuring things by financial results or grand ambition is possibly a bit lame.

Lesson 3: Focus on the elements within your circle of influence, create simple solutions and communicate clearly

One obvious priority is money. Like the oxygen on Apollo 13, it needs to keep flowing to stay alive in order to slingshot the moon in order to get back home.

Yes…but how?

In the picture at the top of this page, it would not have been helpful if the team had all turned up saying things like “That’s not how it works”. That would not have been a helpful mind-set.

They could just as easily have decided to accept the situation and reactively managed every mini-crisis as it arose. If they had done that then it would have been game over.

Sure, they might have been able to look back and say “we did our best” just as we could look back and say that “our company was just another victim of this crisis” but there’s possibly something more important going on here.That is to recognise that we do our most growing and deepest learning in times of crisis.

I love Tony Robbins awakening question we should all ask when life has dealt a brutal blow – What’s good about this? Where is the opportunity here?

This is a chance to activate or strengthen an innovative and collaborative culture in your company. There’s no easy way to do that.

First, you have to decide who you’re going to be / how you’re going to show up and then get on with it.

Then accept that if you’re going to slingshot this crisis and position your company to come out of this in good health, start with finding a way to stand by your people if you can. You’re going to need them. As Simon Sinek says “It’s better for everybody to suffer a little than for a few people to suffer a lot!”

Then you will have to accept that there’s no simple, obvious, correct answers or guaranteed solutions. You will also have to silence all egos and get past all personal sensitivities and vulnerabilities in order to be open to finding creative ways together to solve the business and personal challenges.

For the Apollo team, their approach was a combination of hard numbers and out of the box ideas.

• They translated the situation into a set of critical numbers and challenged the numbers very carefully using visual maps and models of the most likely outcomes and timelines.
• Then they played with as many creative solutions as they could think of, in order to give themselves the best chance of achieving their new goal.
• Then they tested their best ideas and kept working at them until they were as confident as they could be.
• Then they communicated with their customers who were lost in space about how they were going to deliver life-saving value.

Practical application:

Focus on what your data is telling you about what could happen. Map your realistic cashflows on a spreadsheet in as much detail as you can.

Don't rely on wordy instructions but play with visual conversations to test out solutions - mapping out each interested party and how they might be experiencing this challenge.

Test various scenarios with your team. They will know things that you don’t know. Then adapt the tools within your circle of control to become the solutions.

There’s no point hoping all your debtors will pay or your creditors will be patient. There’s no point moaning about the inadequacies of the government schemes. They are all outside your control and they’re all going through exactly the same challenge as you – making their existing tools and systems adapt to a new problem.

Call your customers and suppliers and see how they are doing and what’s possible.

Eliminate unnecessary expenses, find new pricing strategies and helping your employees to do the same.

Maybe this is also an opportunity for all of us to change our relationship with money so it’s no longer the proxy for our personal value but just a system of exchange. Yep – that’s a mindset.

While you’re waiting for the Furlough Scheme to become clear, you have an opportunity to coach your home-owner staff into applying for a mortgage payment holiday. It takes ten minutes to do. It doesn’t affect your credit rating and it will ease the pressure of your biggest monthly outgoing. Where else can we cut out unnecessary expenses, cut down our usage and cut costs by choosing cheaper options? You can save ￡200+ per month just by cutting out that daily coffee from you know who.

Lesson 4: Be conscious of the bigger picture outside of your comfort zone

After 70+ years of almost continuous economic growth; make no mistake, this current crisis has the potential to trigger the greatest depression in living memory. We just don’t know.

In a hundred years time it will just look like another blip but in the meantime, it will continue to hold back a whole generation of good people for whom the trickle-down capitalist system has failed to live up to its promises.

We not only have to focus on the practical solutions within our grasp but we also need to pay attention to the systemic factors that have shaped the way we think about business for as long as any of us can remember.

For some time now, challengers like Mark Blyth, the Financial Times and many others have been a prophetic voice about how we urgently need to fix the brokenness of capitalism as we know it. The difficulty is that this re-imagining needs a grass-roots shift of perspective about what game we are really playing.

That means you!

Most government ministers and theoretical economists have never built a company. They still see business through a Newtonian lens where market forces dictate success and where smart people who do all the right things in the right order, the right way at the right time can legitimately manipulate these forces to their own advantage and claim the biggest piece of the finite pie while the rest of humanity has to settle for the crumbs from the table.

This is now quite evidently the dumbest idea that will keep the money flowing uphill to the few while the majority remain relatively poor for years to come and the politicians make all sorts of excuses about why it’s just too hard to change. It’s a mind-set thing where human beings commonly get stuck - at the stage of conscious evolution where they have to believe they are right and will fight to defend their tribal position all the way rather than be open to a higher possibility. (Checkout Spiral Dynamics if you are curious enough to see what stage you’re at.)

It’s high time economic thinking grew up and caught up with the beautiful quantum fractal reality of life. Thankfully we live in convergence times where the interconnectedness of all things is no longer just a gut sense. There are data-rich discoveries that show humankind is evolving to a higher level of consciousness and wonderful technologies that are helping us to truly democratise everything that matters to having life in all it’s fullness. It’s one of the main reasons so many people are disengaged in the workplace. They see better possibilities but institutional thinking is hard to change without being shaken by the proverbial meteor.

Imagine yourself in the broken rocket for as moment. I wonder what might be possible if looking back at the earth from a new vantage point, we begin to see more clearly the beautiful ecosystem of individual human beings finding ways to create value for other human beings using the fundamental building blocks that every company is made from.

I hope you have caught a glimpse of the deeper truth that our companies are created from the inside out and our economy looks more like a fractal than a hierarchy.

The freelance videographer serves the creative video production company who serves the events management company who serves the hospitality company who serves the hard-working employees of a million different companies who are served by the accountant and the consultant to help them grow as companies and as people in this grand adventure of life. Together they create and build wealth beyond their own individual capability.

Our attention has to expand from how to maintain the status quo where everybody clamours to get their piece of an instantly reduced finite pie, to how we can adapt, using only what we have to create new and infinite possibilities.

It’s time to make sure the broken economic vehicle can be modified to save the people at the same time as the people self-modify their attitudes, behaviours and strategies to save the broken economic vehicle.

Lesson 5: It’s down to you to see and think differently

The things we so easily took for granted as the masters of our own domains are suddenly undermined. And in the words of Warren Buffet “When the tide goes out, you find out who’s been swimming naked.”

Many companies do ok in a ‘me-too’ world but they just haven’t built the right capabilities for navigating this kind of threat. Or as Eugene Kleiner puts it “In a tornado, even a turkey can fly.” But you quickly discover who has done little more than organise a collection of standard business activities and who has built a strategically aligned, agile and collaborative company.

Right now, CEOs everywhere, who are used to being determinist and the authority on how things work, find themselves hoping things can just get to normal as quickly as possible so they can keep playing the game they know how to play. That’s because its too scary not knowing where to start adapting if this turns out to be the beginnings of a massive shift to a new kind of economy.

From where I’m standing, this is just the latest VU.C.A. earthquake that is shaking the world as we know it -  like 9/11, the financial crash, the digital disruption, the 70% disengagement of a more conscious workforce, the brutality of unchecked globalisation and the dysfunction of a kind of capitalism that is no longer good enough for humankind to fully inhabit our true human potential.

Together these challenges have exposed our weak foundations and this time it very starkly highlights our human vulnerabilities as well.

It’s not too big a stretch to see that this will very quickly become a deeper challenge or, better still, an invitation to return to what business is really for in this grand adventure of life.

It’s a time for all of us to re-examine the first principles of business and our own set of values, understanding that whether we realise it or not, it’s our mind-set, including our unchecked beliefs and values, that drive and shape everything we do.

It’s a time to rediscover what it means to appreciate each other’s strengths and talents and the joy of cooperating as fellow human beings to imagine, design, build, organise, evolve and lead great companies that make a difference in the world.

It’s a time for courage and creativity to discover not only the most effective solutions for here and now but the most powerful possibilities for how we continue to create value for others, despite the circumstances.

Whatever your response to this crisis and whatever changes you’re brave enough to make to the way you think and work, this time will not just be remembered as something that happened to you in 2020 but will be a defining moment for your long term effectiveness. 

I recommend you choose to be open to thinking and working differently and raising your leadership game because that’s what it’s going to take.

Use this crisis as an impetus to make far-reaching changes that will make you and your company ready to seize the new opportunities and build new possibilities beyond here.

One final thought to help you get started…..

As Jesus + Gloria Steinem famously said “Truth will set you free…but first, it will p!ss you off”.

The broken paradigm is captured in this finite question posed by our fragile egoic-self: 

• What must I now DO to HAVE what I want so that I can BE rich, happy, important, loved, valued etc?

The more powerful, true-self question, that is the key to your greatest potential, is about flipping that on its head and daring to ask:

• Who will I choose to BE - and how can I leverage what I already HAVE - to DO the kind of work that makes a massive difference - in this beautiful world of infinite possibility?

If you dare to ask this question, you should expect resistance from you ego-consciousness who is addicted to the path of least resistance and probably, right now, trying to convince you that this mind-set problem doesn’t apply to you.

Thank it for its opinion and then make the humble shift to holding lightly to what you think you know and engage your team and maybe a peer leader community who can help you raise your seeing and thinking game.

I know who I want to be. How about you?

A quick shout out for the Rapid Response Team

If you’re serious about raising your game or just curious about where you can test some of your solutions and ideas….

Come and meet some hugely helpful and humble people at the 8 O Clock Zoom Room facilitated by The CEO Growth Academy Rapid Response Team

We are currently gathering every Tuesday and Thursday at 8am and 8pm UK time to help each other see clearly, make good choices and access the practical solutions and support required to do things well.

The team are all proven leaders who fully understand the interconnectedness of all your business and personal vulnerabilities and how to handle them well. Their wisdom and expertise comes from successfully navigating some of the most complex fallout from world-changing issues like 9/11 the Global Financial Crash, the ongoing Digital Disruption as well as the personal angst of business failures and all the doubts, uncertainties and pressures that come with it.

We’re using a framework of Seven Critical Challenges which is designed to make every session a very practical time well spent.

We also have technical advisers from the domains of finance, HR, employment law, technology, communications etc, who are up to speed on applying what’s right and possible for you.

The best news is it’s absolutely FREE but unbelievably valuable.

 If I don’t see you in the Zoom Room, stay safe, be courageous and open up to your team. They have more to bring to this than you can imagine.

Yours Sincerely

 Chris

Here to help you build momentum in life & business