Men in space taught us how to do business
The U.S. space program of the 1960s was wondrous. As a small boy, I peered into our black-and-white TV set to soak in every minute of every launch, orbit and splashdown of the spacecrafts. On my birthdays, my mother stuck a model rocket on top of my cake. I was way into the space program.
Watching this week’s news coverage of Apollo 11’s 40th anniversary has brought back those riveting moments. It all seemed so effortless. Very little seemed to go wrong, and if it did, I didn’t understand the implications anyway. Armstrong and Aldrin’s landing on the moon was incredibly thrilling, but also somewhat inevitable. Effortless and inevitable.
The truth was nothing of the sort, as we now know. The U.S. moon men endured nearly a decade of intense training; faced countless dangers on earth and in space; and were given absolutely no guarantee that they would return safely – many thought safe returns would be the exception. Thousands of workers supported them by building huge rockets; developing fuel and computer systems; mapping complex trajectories; and making sure the astronauts could breathe, eat and go to the bathroom in zero gravity.
Lessons? I think the U.S. space program created the idea of crisis management. It made plenty of mistakes, but it always — always — focused on solutions. That’s what the training was all about — what do we do if this goes wrong? The astronauts and their teams on the ground trained and trained and trained some more, and every conceivable problem was identified and solved before ever occurring.
There are two excellent movies that showcase how crisis management works in normal-to-extreme circumstances. One is “The Bridge On The River Kwai.” The other is “Apollo 13.” If you choose not to conduct crisis training at your organization or company, at least watch these films.