…and was struck by both the immensity of the endeavour and some of the responses to the final outcome.
Much of the mainstream or legacy media’s commentary focused on the last few seconds of the launch as the Starship tumbled and then exploded. The failures.
Alternative media outlets ran through and commented on the entire four minutes of flight with the final destruction just part of the entire happening. Some of the successes.
As Elon Musk mentioned prior to the launch, he couldn’t guarantee success but could guarantee excitement. And he delivered.
From all accounts, the first Starship launch was a combination of successes, it got off the launch pad without totally destroying it along with some failures, it didn’t make it to orbit and exploded during the attempt.
How many times have we experienced this success/failure conundrum in our own lives and work but sometimes stop short?
- We try something new and it doesn’t quite work out so we shelve it and criticize ourselves for our incompetence.
- A new work process is tried and initial results focus on what didn’t work with little attention paid to what did.
This seems to be where we often get stuck; either we don’t start something because we fear we can’t assure a perfect result the first time out or, if things go awry, we don’t reframe the experience and learn some lessons for the next attempt but maybe quit instead.
Most of us will not be putting billions of dollars at stake as Elon Musk did so maybe we can take a few more risks, criticize a little less, fail and learn a little more, and get something new happening. This is moving from management to leadership and, as Seth Godin has stated, “it might not work.”
Written while listening to some Paganini solo violin works.
William Kerr And associates 