Skateboard People vs. Pie People

I watched two documentaries this week and was struck by the differences and similarities between Tony Hawk and Elon Musk. Both are skateboard people. Let’s start with Hawk, perhaps the greatest skateboarder of all. HBO is airing Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off and it’s terrific. Most people, who aren’t into skateboarding, probably were not aware that, after 12 years of all of the top vertical skaters trying to land a 900, Hawk succeeded.?

These skaters perform in a vert, a half-pipe, where you start at the top of a vertical ramp and essentially fall straight down until it curves to the horizontal at the bottom. Then, they go up the other side of the half-pipe and fly above it. You have to be a little crazy to do it. Hawk flew above it and turned 2 ? times (900/360) in the air and then stayed on his board all the way down to the horizontal plane.?

This was at the X Games in 1999. He didn’t win anything, and he fell horribly ten times before he made it. But as another skater observed, you could see him learning from each fall while his concentration narrowed. He was competing against himself, and, through the sweat and the pain, he was determined to succeed.?

Here’s the great part. All of the other skateboarders were pulling for him and were deliriously happy that he succeeded. His success was their success. Those are Skateboard People.

Elon Musk is a skateboard person as are the people that work with him in SpaceX. A documentary on Netflix called Countdown: Inspiration 4 Mission to Space recalls Musk telling the staff that he had enough money for three shots at getting a rocket into space. Three terrific explosions signal failure each time. But Elon figured out that they had learned so much from the failures that he pulled the last of his money together and went for more. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was also thrilled. They hadn’t sent up a rocket since 2011 but the SpaceX gang had figured out a way to land the booster rockets (rather than just dump them in the ocean) so that they could be reused making the flights 100 times cheaper.?

Here's the great part. The entire Space X staff cheered because they knew that every single one of them had done their part, large or small, to make it happen. They are all skateboard people.

I had to learn to be a Skateboard Person because I was a “Pie Person.” When I worked in government, I learned to be a Pie Person. These are people whose sole goal is to get their share of the budget, the pie, for themselves or their group. You spend a lot of time arguing for your share and being jealous or resentful about what others get. You privately and publicly trash those competing against you for more budget dollars. The mission is secondary since no one really tracks whether you succeed at anything or not.?

It's a horrible waste of life and I’m sure you can find them not just in government but in private organizations as well. There are also professional Pie People. Those are people who spend their lives clamoring for government redistribution of resources. You know who they are. They don’t do 900s and they don’t get rockets into space.

After retiring from government, I got a job in the nonprofit sector and almost got fired at the end of my first year - because I was a Pie Person. It hit me square in the face and I rapidly adjusted my thinking. If we were to accomplish anything, I realized that everyone in the process had a role to play and I needed to support everyone, including making sure that they had a sufficient budget to succeed. Budgets were basically a distraction from a focus on accomplishing our mission and our mission was to hit the equivalent of a 900 or a rocket launch.?

We always need budgets, but we needn’t become Pie People. It’s a whole lot more satisfying to be a Skateboard Person.

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