Trial And Error – How To Succeed In a Hard Industry

By Tom Hasker, Associate Partner & Mentorship Coach, Lighthouse International

When you see your life’s work blow up in flames, it is very easy and tempting to give up, admit defeat and abandon the project. This is what anyone who has built anything substantial has had to face and almost certainly more than once.

It would be easy for the team at Space X to be thinking those kinds of thoughts when they saw their latest launch on the 1st of September blow up while they were loading propellant. While the cause is still unknown, Space X has come under fire and criticism for their approach to innovation and progress before. What they are doing is revolutionary in the industry, since they are not only one of the ‘new breed’ of commercial rocket corporations launching hardware into space but also developing reusable rockets to reduce the cost of each flight. This drive to innovate and create new vehicles, systems and processes, is fraught with dangers and possible setbacks.

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So when someone puts up their hand and believes in what you are doing in spite of a failure, it can feel like a breath of fresh air…

“Despair is always the wrong response to a failure during exploration and it isn’t disciplined engineering. When the entire crew of Apollo was burned alive in a capsule test, President Johnson pushed our moon mission forward and engineers delivered. When Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, President Reagan proudly redoubled our commitment to space, we fixed the launch system and we built a great space station. When Columbia broke up on reentry we engineered work arounds and completed the Space Shuttle program with pride. Once again, America’s brightest engineers will collect the data, analyse the failure, improve the system and move us forward into the future.”

This quote from Greg Autry, an Assistant Professor with The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, is from a Space News article that Elon Musk himself appreciated in his tweet;

Thoughtful Op-ed in Space News much appreciated https://t.co/CJq5g3NIEK

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2016

Legends get to where they are, by knowing that despite their setbacks, they know they are on the right path and that they will accomplish what they need to do. It is not easy. The rocket industry motto is ‘space is hard’ and there is a reason why in popular culture there is a phrase; ‘It’s not rocket science.’

For the team at Space X, this is rocket science. However, it is also what they love to do, it is tied to a vision of putting a human colony on Mars and it is the only thing they are focused on. By being open to the lessons, they will learn from this latest failure and by keeping their heads about them, the improvements and developments for the next launch will come about sooner. The alternative, of panic and despair, is not how to build for the future.

For a detailed analysis of the incident suffered by Space X, check out this video by Scott Manley;

If you are facing a set back, and feel you would like help to turn things around, get in touch on live chat from our home page…

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