As a ten year old, I dreamed of going into space, to the moon. Maybe other places outside the immediate neighborhood. The science fiction books I read encouraged me that such adventures were possible within my lifetime. And until 1981, that continued to be what I was working for. Then reality set in: married, one child born and another on the way, no manned space program going on, and my career path was firmly in the opposite direction.
But I never lost the desire for the perspective that being off the planet would provide. Recently, I got the opportunity to get as close to that viewpoint as I ever would. I interviewed Bill Gregory, former astronaut and pilot on the space shuttle Endeavor in March of 1995. Bill is five years younger than I, went to the Air Force Academy, (like I could have), and became a spaceman, (like I didn’t). I was hungry to hear about his experiences.
Bill described the purpose of his mission’s astronomical payload. “If the universe was indeed created by a Big Bang fusion reaction, then helium would be found in every galaxy. The 400 galaxies we examined all held the expected content of helium. The most distant one examined was 130 million light years away. We spent over 16 days in space on this mission, and unlike current missions, there was plenty of time to look out the window.”
I envied Bill his luxurious look at the universe, but what does a former astronaut do on earth? Bill said, “After 20 years in the Air Force, I decided to choose my career path to match my family needs. I worked for Honeywell for nine years, a huge corporation of 120,000 employees, managed like Jack Welch would likely do it. Lots of internal competition. Then I joined a small, 120 employee, privately held aerospace company. Micro-Tronics is about the same size as an Air Force flight squadron, and has the same camaraderie.”
Of course, I wanted to hear what Bill learned as he gazed out of his spaceship’s windows. What did I miss? Bill explained, “The view of the earth is absent the map borders. There are no national boundaries, there are no “blue” and “red” political states. We’re all the same, joined together by the same land and oceans. I got a better feel for humanity as a whole.
“Another point is that when you’re down here on earth, and you see a thunderstorm with huge cloud masses, the atmosphere seems formidable. But from up there, the atmosphere is a fragile and thin egg shell. I began to see how important ecology and protecting our earth really is,” Bill said.
I asked Bill what he learned about leadership in the Air Force that might translate to the business world. He said, “A general can never win a war. The general can make sure that the right assets are in the right place at the right time. Then individual soldiers win the battles and the war. There is nothing that a general can individually do. But a general can lose a war. Leadership can make bad decisions, not having the appropriate assets (people, tools and money) in place at the right time and place. Soldiers win wars, generals can lose them. It’s the same in corporate America.”
Wow, I thought. That’s profound. And true. Then I asked Bill what he saw as the difference between a big company and a small one. He didn’t hesitate: “The leader of a large, publicly owned company has the job of propping the stock price and making the shareholders happy. That leader will sometimes make decisions that are short-term and unsound over the long haul. In a small, privately held company, the leader is not as affected by the dive on Wall Street. The longer-term perspective is maintained more consistently. We’re not driven by the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The irony is that the larger, ostensibly more capable organization with all of its prodigious resources, cannot weather the short-term downturns as robustly as the smaller, private company who can keep its eye on the bigger picture over a longer time horizon.”
What about how a company deals with relationships? I wondered what Bill learned in the space program that might apply to business. Bill observed, “I see companies that look at the customer and want to be treated one way. Then they look at their vendors and seek to treat them another way. A simple example is the receivables-versus-payables philosophy. Everybody wants to get paid quickly and then pays their vendors slowly.
“Another topic is ‘cost’. The company argues to the customer that the cost of the company’s product should be viewed not just on price, but on value. Then they consider their own employees as a cost and not an investment, ignoring the value associated with the expense. Flying for NASA, astronauts were the most visible members of a huge team that accomplished the amazing feats of our space program. You learn how vital each team member’s contribution is to the safety and success of the missions. NASA sends people to every vendor, to make sure that they have an image of a special human being whose life depends on the product that the vendor creates. In other words, treat your vendors like you’d want to be treated by your customers. And treat your employees better than you want to be treated by your customers.”
The view from space is indeed illuminating. Too bad we can’t send all of our business leaders up for a 16 day stint to focus their perspective.