← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
456. Moonshot Strategies: Business Insights from NASA's Space Race
00:35:59
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer revisits an insightful discussion on the lessons every business can learn from NASA. Originally aired in the summer of 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, this...
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- [00:00]
Gene Krantz
Hey there Melina. Here I'm excited to share. I'm teaching two virtual courses in Applied Behavioral Economics which are enrolling now. Advanced concepts of Behavioral Economics and Internal Communication and Change Management. So if you're interested, don't delay, learn more and enroll at HBL. Like Human Behavior Lab dot TAMU. Like Texas A&M University EDU. Again, that's HBL dot TAMU and click on Certificate program when you're ready.
- [00:37]
Melina Palmer
Let's start the show. Welcome to episode 456 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about lessons every business can learn from NASA. Ready? Let's get started.
- [00:57]
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [01:12]
Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about lessons from NASA. As you'll hear as this one gets into the main content of the episode, it originally aired back in the summer of 2019 to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of the moon landing. And that one small step for me fan. It's funny, I wasn't sure if I would ever end up refreshing this one, which kind of bummed me out because it's such a fascinating example of success in business and in industry. But I wasn't sure there would ever be the right episode that would justify it. Would it relate enough to anything to make sense and be a good fit? Well, good news. I found a great connection with the new episode coming out later this week. My conversation with Dr. Rob Wolcott and Kaihan Krippendorf discussing their new proximity it's all about the future of life as we know it, really. Products, services and experiences and how they will all soon be on demand. Just in time. Anything, anywhere, anytime. This radical change is already underway as digital technologies push the production and provision of value ever closer to the moment of demand. They show how the proximity revolution is transforming every industry, offering unparalleled foresight for leaders and innovators. It is in an entirely new way to serve customers with critical implications for corporate strategy, investing, public policy, supply chain resilience and sustainability. Incremental changes to existing business models won't suffice. Just like at the time that we were needing to get to the moon and look at space travel. So that book is placing rapidly advancing technologies from generative AI and 3D printing to lab grown meats, renewable energy, virtual reality, and yes, space travel in context and explores the factors accelerating the transformation. So to set you up for that episode coming out later this week, and just because I love this episode, I'm delighted to refresh it for you here today to get you starting to think about how you can look at everything in a completely new way and do things that no one has ever done before in a way that can help everyone to advance and move forward. So don't forget, links for my top related past episodes and books are waiting for you in the show Notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 456 all right, let's talk about lessons from NASA.
- [03:54]
Gene Krantz
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong descended onto the lunar surface and uttered those immortal words. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. It's hard to believe that was 50 years ago and that knowing what we know today about technology, that it was even able to be done with the equipment they had available. Most anyone today would think it was impossible to have completed that feat in the 1960s. So questions might arise like why then? Why the moon and why did it matter so much? Some of you listening may have lived through the experience and others may know very little about the history. So I'm going to do a little bit of work to set the scene. There are lots of links in the show notes for anyone who wants to research more, but there is great information on NASA's website via the History Channel and on outlets like Netflix and Amazon Prime. There's a lot of information out about Apollo 11 right now because of the 50 year anniversary. I really enjoyed a short documentary series from Seeker on the Apollo missions, which can be found on Prime Video as well as their website, and it was at least free when I was checking it out. All right, here we go into the history and mindset of what started NASA, the space race, and everything leading up to those first steps on the moon. The Cold War intensified as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite, into orbit in October 1957, much to the shock of the United States. This led to fear and essentially kicked off the space race. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, also known as NASA, was then created in 1958, an action that may not have been taken if it was not for the Cold War and the need for the space race. The US Was behind, and that was shown very publicly when NASA attempted to launch its own satellite, Vanguard, just a few weeks after launching NASA, which resulted in a fiery explosion a few feet off the ground. When Kennedy became president, he really ratcheted up excitement and budget for NASA. You've likely heard excerpts from his famous speech at Rice University in Houston. There are, of course, links in the show, notes to the video, and the entire text, which I do recommend watching or reading because any great speech can teach you a lot about your own communication. You'll notice in that speech a few notes about increased taxes, which was important because, as Kennedy says in the speech, the budget was increased to be more than the last eight years combined, and it would continue to climb during the space race. Overall, the Apollo program cost nearly $20 billion, a third of NASA's budget for those 13 years. So public interest was important to keep funding around for the program, and so sprinkling in little tidbits about taxes was really key and important. Kennedy also does a great job of priming and framing throughout the speech and playing on the past victories and pride of the U.S. texas and the city of Hous, as well as, I'm sure, inspiring many of those students to go on to work at NASA. And Rice ended up having the first space science department in the Nation in 1963. Kennedy was amazing at speeches, and this one was no different. In the moon speech, he did great work to motivate the audience and the general public about the importance of the program and to encourage them to get behind the Space Race Initiative. The speech was sprinkled with many comments about the importance of allowing space to be reached for freedom and exploration instead of tyranny, which was an important sentiment in America during the Cold War, to prime them for the years ahead and paying those taxes, he said. But why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? That, of course, got a big clap. He then went on to say, and you've probably heard this one before, we choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one which we intend to win. This, of course, was incredibly motivating and helps to overcome doubts. And it frames the deadline of getting to the moon before the decade is out, something they are unwilling to postpone. Kennedy drew a line in the sand that helped really launch the program. He also helped to overcome some hurdles by saying we choose to go to the moon. Not we must go to the moon or we will, but we choose to do this because it is hard which frames the world for the difficulties to come, which was, as it turns out, a smart thing to do. Later on, he acknowledges America not having been doing so well in the race so far by saying, we have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them and they may be less public. To be sure, we are behind and will be behind for some time in manned flight, but we do not intend to stay behind and in this decade we shall make up and move ahead. Acknowledging where they were and admitting to the failures was important, but so was hinting that the Soviets must have had failures as well, even if they were not shown publicly. This also helped to instill confidence and can combat the availability bias which is the human's natural tendency to believe more strongly that which comes to mind easiest. If all you see is victory from the space program of the Soviet Union and failure from the space program in the US it was likely to make many believe America would not be able to win and that the other side was simply better at all. This. However, making it clear that they could not possibly have nothing but success was key to helping rally the nation behind a decade of hard work in landing a man on the moon first and bringing him back safely. Framing all of this in the context of technological advancement and freedom and building upon this sentiment that was really important in America at the time, helped to keep everybody rallied beyond the point of moving forward and knowing that those failures were okay and they might happen and they were doing everything they could to avoid them. But when you're doing things that are hard, sometimes you're going to have slip ups along the way, but you need to keep going. One last thing Kennedy did in his speech was to paint a picture of the task ahead, to make it relatable for the audience. This plays both on their senses of hearing and sight. Episodes I've linked to in the show notes and as you know from episode 54 on, our biases toward novelty and story. Making this feel real before it even happened was an important task. To do this, Kennedy said, we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300ft tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced to an untried mission to an unknown celestial body and then return it safely to Earth. Re entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun. We will do all this and do it right and do it first before this decade is out. Truly amazing, inspiring stuff. And again, you should check out the full speech if you haven't seen or heard it before. That speech changed everything. It was the spark that went on to fuel a fire in the hearts of Americans in a story that would captivate the country and the world for the decade and beyond. And as it turns out, there are lots of lessons your business can learn from NASA during the space race. While your failures are likely not life or death situations and you may not be breaking world records at every turn, and this story unfolded half a century ago. I want to break down five key areas where your business, no matter what industry you're in, can learn from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions at NASA. The first section is about looking for problems and solutions. Next is the importance of testing, but not being afraid to pull the trigger when the time comes. Third is the importance of delegation, autonomy and support. Fourth is the benefit of visibility. And finally, the importance of word choice. Now let's launch into looking for problems and solutions. As you heard in that last excerpt from Kennedy's speech, the plan to land a man on the moon meant stepping into unjust, uncharted territories. Really, at every turn, the scientists and staff of NASA had to create solutions to problems that didn't even exist yet. And they had a need to think hundreds or maybe even thousands of steps into an uncertain future. With so many moving parts, it would be impossible to think of every single issue that could come up. But it was critical to think through as many of those pieces as possible. This is important enough to have lived through at NASA, where they have a section on their website called My Everyday Extraordinary, and there are profiles from various staff on their extraordinary moments and why they work at NASA. One of the key messages I saw there says my extraordinary is using challenges as my inspiration, a sentiment initiated by Kennedy all those years ago. Unfortunately, this is in direct competition with a bias we humans are all susceptible to called functional fixedness, which I talked about in the series on the biases. This is where we get the phrase when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. At NASA, this is not acceptable. And in your business, there are likely many times where this natural Bias of your brain is doing more damage than you realize. In NASA's case, consider the astronauts on Apollo 13 who had a lot go wrong when their oxygen tank had an explosion on board 56 hours into their mission, which it turns out had been damaged an entire year earlier, but no one knew when it was installed on board. The three astronauts were forced to take refuge in their LEM vehicle, which was not equipped for them. And they were very quickly faced with dangerous levels of carbon dioxide building up due to the increased amount of bodies and time in the lem. Unfortunately, one thing the teams at NASA did not realize in the previous years when they were designing the two capsules was that one unit, CO2 scrubbers, had square fittings and the other had round ones. Tens of thousands of miles away from Earth, the astronauts had a problem that could only be fixed by fitting a square peg into a round hole. Back on the ground, when the teams began to let their natural tendency toward functional fixedness take over, they began to explain why it couldn't work and saying they weren't designed to do the things they were being asked to do. In this critical moment, Flight Director Gene Krantz famously said, I don't care what anything was designed to do. I care about what it can do. Those on the ground were inspired to overcome their natural tendency toward functional fixedness to create an ingenious hack to save the lives of the astronauts over 100,000 miles away. There are a few lessons here for your business. First, it's important to think through problems that can come up before they become problems to help you be prepared. If, for example, someone had said, you know, having a functional CO2 scrubber is pretty darn important aboard a spacecraft. Maybe we should make sure they're all the same throughout every craft in case something goes wrong and they need to be replaced. I'm guessing that's something they do now. And while not every system on board a spacecraft can have lots of replacement parts and storage on board, understanding what could go wrong and evaluating what is mission critical is important to success. With each decision you make, how far into the future ramifications are you thinking? And when things do go wrong, where is your team only seeing a hammer as something to hit nails with? Let's move on to our next lesson. To test and retest, but also know when to move. Simulations and trial runs were key to getting to the Moon because there were so many groundbreaking steps that had to be accomplished before being able to tackle the ultimate goal. Astronauts trained for countless hours in simulators before trying maneuvers in space, and each phase of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were set up to test a few key aspects for the final goal of getting a person to walk on the moon and come back safely. Safely. In the case of the first moon landing, questions like can man function in space? How can spacecraft rendezvous in orbit? And can a craft orbit the moon and then leave again safely? Were answered one mission at a time before Apollo 11 got the go ahead to attempt to land and step out onto the surface. But just as important is the next piece. Once the can it be done? Question was answered, it was checked off the list and added to the yes column for future missions. Because the program was so expensive and the timeline so short, they didn't have an option to test spacewalks and moon orbits multiple times to perfect them before moving on to the next phase of the program. No mission was ever guaranteed and countless things could go wrong, but they still moved forward instead of suffering analysis paralysis, even though it was likely their natural tendency to want to evaluate and analyze every little piece. They were scientists, after all. The big lesson for your business is to narrow down your focus to one or two big, important goals. Listen to episode 29 of this podcast to help you with that piece. Then break your big goal into smaller tasks and questions that need to be answered. Set up tests to ensure they can be done, and then keep moving forward. A video on NASA's careers website outlines this sentiment perfectly by saying, our successes build one upon another and amplify what is possible. Make sure your successes are building to something important, and that leads to our next lesson on the importance of autonomy and support. With a team of 400,000 working to build rockets, train astronauts, and innovate constantly, delegation was key. Yes, those teams were united toward a common goal, thanks to great speeches from President Kennedy and, I'm sure, other messaging throughout the organization. However, there's one other important piece that was required to make this program successful. Those teams were given the room they needed to work autonomously to solve problems. And even though the average age in Mission control was just 26 years old when the crew of Apollo 11 landed on the moon, each person's ability and expertise was trusted. This allowed them to feel supported and do the work they needed to do. It gave them the courage to find ways to fit square pegs into round holes and come up with and then recommend innovative solutions. Even though lives were on the line, this leadership mindset came from the top down. The flight director, Gene Kranz, who I mentioned earlier when talking about Apollo 13, was only 35 years old during the Apollo 11 mission, and yet he had the presence of mind to say incredibly smart things to his team. Like, whatever happens, I will never second guess any of your calls. Now let's go. Let's go land on the moon. Support and autonomy gave the young teams permission to do amazing things. It would have been easy to second guess at any turn, but that would not have led them to their goal. And clearly everyone was motivated to do their best. This was uncharted territory for everyone, regardless of age. So in many cases, having a young team was a benefit to the program and could have led to its success. This whole concept is one that really resonates with me personally. I first experienced this sort of support during what I like to call my first real job. I was just 19 years old working in the customer care department at Alaska Airlines. I remember my manager telling me that whatever decision I made when talking with a customer, she would support it and that she would never throw me under the bus. So to make sure it was something we would all be proud of, saying we did. That moment was one that shifted something in the way I worked. I knew I was part of a team and that my actions reflected on everyone else on the team. I carried this message and sentiment with me throughout my career to my own staffs and various roles and organizations over the years. I always told my teams that I would support them in any decision they made and let them know how. Delegation was a sign of my trust in and respect for them. There's a great quote on delegation, which I think I first read in the book Fierce Conversations that says you can delegate a task, but not the responsibility. Anyone on my team doing anything is an extension of myself. If they do something out of alignment, that's still on me because I should have trained them better. If I can't trust them to make the right decision, there's different work to be done. Surround yourself with a team you can trust fully and you'll be amazed at what you can achieve together in your business. Do you delegate enough and trust your team to take on and really own your big vision? Do they feel supported to look for new options and innovative paths for you? And do they understand that delegation is a sign of trust and not one of passing off tasks that you don't want to be doing? Again, this all applies regardless of industry. Whether you're selling products or services, a supported team is critical to doing great things and they need to know they are supported. If you haven't told people directly and explicitly that you will support them, no matter what you need to. And even if you have, it probably wouldn't hurt to say it again. All right, moving on to lesson number four, the importance of visibility and how much it can make a difference. Can you imagine how different the moon landing would have been without video or photos cataloging every step of the way? Mere descriptions on radio programs or even the astronauts talking about it would not have had the same impact. Because mirror neurons in the human brain allow us to experience visually with others as if we're achieving the same feat ourselves. As you know from episode 31 of this podcast, allowing the public to live in the moment and experience along with the astronauts made it all more real and intriguing to everyone. It brought context to the story of these living legends, heroes in the making. Changing life as we knew it, plus experiencing the first steps in real time must have been incredibly motivating and rewarding for the team. I know there are people today who still doubt we actually made it to the moon. I'm not getting into that debate, but can you imagine how many more people would not have believed it if there wasn't video evidence and photographs? If it was just a bunch of people saying we did that, would anyone really believe it? The lesson and question for your business is this. Are you making your important projects visible enough to rally the troops? While not everything needs to be put on video and not every little detail needs to be shared with everyone, there's a lot of power in transparency. Remember that speech from Kennedy where he acknowledged the failures, including the giant explosion and failure of the first attempt to launch an American satellite into orbit, which was broadcast around the country? Transparency and visibility does not mean an edited version of projects where only the good things are broadcast, often laying all the cards out. And being transparent is key to motivating a team to move forward and rally together and do great things. Where can you share more, either via video or other communications, to ensure big goals and projects are focused on and remembered? The last and one of my favorite points on this list of tips is the importance of word choice. And this is in more than just presidential speeches. No one told Neil Armstrong what to say or asked him what his first words would be when he stepped onto the lunar surface. Perhaps this was because they did not know the importance of the word choice in history, but luckily the words he chose perfectly captured the moment. It was easy to remember, which is key to making people internalize it and tie back to the emotions they felt through the whole decade, making it really live on over time. His words were poignant and succinct and brought so much legitimacy to the entire team at NASA to say this was one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind. What an amazing thing to say. So well put. I don't think that anybody could have come up with anything better or more impactful than those amazing words. Going back to Kennedy, many can still recite lines from the Moon speech, and the team working at NASA during the 60s was well aware that the entire world knew their deadline of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely before the decade was out. A deadline that had been explicitly stated as immovable and something I'm sure was even more important to honor after Kennedy's untimely death in 1963. Even though JFK would not see the goal realized, I'm sure no one wanted to let him down and tarnish the legacy he set in motion seven years earlier. And lastly, while I mentioned a few quotes from Gene Krantz, there are countless more gems that were attributed to him over the years, including the very important words that failure was not an option. If any one of those statements were phrased differently, it could have changed everything. If Kennedy had said, I'm hopeful that a team will eventually be able to get us to the moon someday, would NASA have ever had the support it needed to be successful? Or if Armstrong had said, well, we did it, would anyone remember his words half a century later? Would it have inspired future scientists and astronauts to put in their own hard work and continue to challenge the status quo? Or if Kranz had said, it's okay if you fail, but try to do your best, would the astronauts of Apollo 13 have made it home? The lesson for you as a leader and within your business is this. In the moment, it may feel like word choice isn't critical. You may think you can always clarify, always go back and edit. But the subconscious brain is picking up on so many millions of bits of information and you can't unring the bell. It would take many, many words to undo damage if something is not said properly. And motivating a team is easier to do when you're conscious in the way you speak and the words you choose. While Kennedy and Armstrong knew their moments were monumental, Kranz likely wasn't thinking about the fact that every word he said was being recorded during a mission and would be evaluated by businesses decades into the future. That manager who told me about how she would support any decision I made didn't know how profoundly it would impact my life. As you move up the ranks in an organization, the words you use in everyday conversations matter much more than you realize. Another great quote from Fierce Conversations is to consider whether each interaction you have is leaving an afterglow, an aftertaste, or an aftermath. If it has to be one of those three, and it does, it's important to strive for afterglow as much as you can, but at the very least make sure you aren't creating an aftermath to be dealt with later. Individual conversations with your teams and peers may seem like they're one of millions and that they can be thrown away because there's always another one that will be happening next. But instead, I encourage you to be thoughtful each and every time, because the words you choose in any conversation could be the difference between changing the world forever and just another day. I hope you enjoyed learning a little about NASA in honor of that small step for man that is still teaching us lessons about business 50 years later in your company, remember to one think about the ripples and look for problems before they come up so you can plan for them and always be working on innovative solutions. Hammers can be more than just hammers. Next, break your big goals into smaller tasks and test each step before you move forward on the final goal. But make sure you actually do move forward. 3. Let your teams know you trust and support their decisions and that delegation is an extension of your belief in them. 4. Make big, important projects visible and as transparent as possible and five Take the time to choose the right words because they might be famous quotes attributed to you one day.
- [33:46]
Melina Palmer
So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about NASA today? For me, like so many others, I've always been fascinated by space travel and the moon landing. Apollo 13 came out when I was a kid and I remember seeing it and learning a bit about that. True story. I was amazed. And while the astronauts were of course key to the story and so important and heroic, I was always more impressed with Gene Krantz. That scene where he says that he doesn't care what it was designed to do, he only wants to know what it can do. I never forgot that and I was delighted I was able to showcase this story even more in my book what your employees need and can't tell you. But isn't that reframe amazing? It changes so much just saying something in a slightly different way and how it reacts with our brains. I love that. Stretching the boundaries of what is possible, going where no one has gone before, looking to the future and seeing something.
- [34:40]
Gene Krantz
Others might not see.
- [34:42]
Melina Palmer
What might they say can't be done. But you know that it can be if you just have the opportunity. That ability to think differently and push the boundaries to create a new reality is the perfect primer for my upcoming conversation with Rob Wolcott and Kaihan Krippendorf about their book Proximity. It's a peek behind the curtain into the future about what companies and industries are already doing to shape a reality that is beyond what many of us could conceive of, but most of us will experience sooner than we realize. Is your business adapting and thinking about this proximate future where everything is on demand and that is actually more sustainable? It's a fascinating journey and I can't wait to share it with you. If you aren't already subscribe to the Brainy Business podcast. Now is a great time to do so. To ensure you don't miss that or any other episode as they come out, there are links in the show notes to make it easy as well as links to my top related past episodes, books and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 456 and just like that, episode 456 on lessons from NASA is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Rob Wolcott and Kaihan Krippendorf discussing their book Proximity. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [36:20]
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.