Technology & Leadership Lessons from Astronaut Ron Garan

A highly decorated fighter and test pilot, explorer, entrepreneur, and humanitarian, Ron inspires people to put aside their differences and destructive competitive tendencies so that they can work together for common goals. Drawing from his own unique experience working with a diverse group of people in a stressful environment with virtually no privacy, he shows how humanity can focus on what we have in common rather than let our differences tear us apart.

SPEAKING.COM: How has viewing the Earth from space changed your perspective on humanity?

GARAN: People ask me all the time if going to space changed me. I think that one thing that has definitely changed in me is my definition of the word home. This became very clear when we landed after our 6-month mission. I remember our capsule coming to rest on its side after a fiery violent ride through the atmosphere at 5 miles per second. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “I’m home!” What was really interesting about that thought was I was home but I was in Kazakhstan. So, in that moment I realized that home wasn’t just Houston TX where at the time I lived with my family. Home was Earth.

I also realized that broadening our definition of the word home does not come with a requirement to forget where we came from or our national, ethnic, religious, cultural, or organizational affiliations. It simply means seeing those things in the context of the bigger picture.

SPEAKING.COM: What are some of the major impacts the accelerated pace of technology has had on the global community?

GARAN: Today, technology is advancing at an exponential rate. If we look back at the unprecedented, incredible, increase in the capability of technology over the past five years and project that technological advancement to the next five years the advancements are mind-boggling.

As mind-boggling as they are, they will prove to be a vast underestimate. We tend to think linearly. Throughout all of history – up to a few decades ago this worked well. We can no longer project technological advancements out linearly because the rate of acceleration of technological advancement is itself accelerating rapidly. The exponential increase in technological capability is making the impossible possible on a daily basis. It is also leading to true innovation.

I hear that word innovation constantly. The word is used in advertising, business plans, and countless seminars and conferences. Although there are cases of misuse and overuse for sure, I believe the reason why we hear the word innovation so much is because what is needed at this moment in history is, in fact, innovation. That is, innovation defined as coming up with better solutions – better solutions that come from doing something different rather than doing the same thing better.

When we zoom out to the Orbital Perspective the exponential dimension comes into focus. That is because the rhythm of nature defined within the biosphere of our planet is exponential. When we zoom out to the Orbital Perspective, we naturally take a long-term view that acknowledges the interdependent exponential nature of all things.

SPEAKING.COM: The “Manna Energy Foundation” is a non-profit environmental organization you helped found; why did you start this non-profit and what projects has it initiated?

GARAN: The Manna Energy Foundation evolved to become a social enterprise incubator. I founded the organization because I was frustrated by how we tend to slap short-term Band Aides on problems and then pat ourselves on the back. I wanted to develop financially self-sustaining organizations that solve the underlying root causes of the problems we face.

I wanted to create an organization that focused on long-term, multi-generational solutions. Through this model we are continuing to provide clean water to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa and we launched several very successfully organizations that are making real transformative impact in the world.

SPEAKING.COM: What are some ways that leaders can manage risk?

GARAN: In 1988 I had two serious aircraft malfunctions back-to-back that almost killed me.

In the first, I ejected from an F-16 less than a second before I would have been outside of the ejection envelope. The next day I had to “dead-stick” an F-16 back to the runway with a serious engine malfunction. What got my attention was after thousands of uneventful takeoffs, I had two that almost killed me in as many days.

After that my eyes were opened and I saw risk in a new light. I saw risk as the price to pay for a benefit, I saw an emerging risk/benefit tradeoff. This new outlook probably saved my life and carried me through many dangerous periods in my life; from flying in combat during the 1st Gulf war, to being an instructor at the AF’s Top Gun School (Fighter Weapons School), to flying as an AF test pilot, to two space missions and four space walks.

In each of those environments, the first thing I did was access where the safe exit to the situation was, unlike the young fighter pilot of my youth I didn’t blindly charge into a situation without first answering the question; “Where’s the way out if everything goes south?” But before I ever got myself into a situation where I could possibly need an exit strategy, I first asked myself, was stepping into that situation worth it? Was the potential benefit worth the risk? The answer to that question sometimes was that the potential benefit was so great and the cost of not taking action so high that I was willing to enter a situation knowing I had no way out if things went south. These situations were very rare. I had a couple of these situations in combat where not taking action and putting myself at risk would threaten the lives of troops on the ground and certainly during space missions there were times where all I had to go on was a belief that what we were doing was having tremendous benefit for the world.

In order for an individual, organization or corporation to progress, grow, and succeed some risk must be taken. The safest possible space program is one that never launches anything to space – but what good is that?

What NASA does better than probably any other organization in the world is to look at a situation and then spend a great deal of time and effort figuring out beforehand every possible thing that can go wrong and develop plans that can be enacted in a very short amount of time to overcome those situations. But the trick in this type of risk mitigation strategy is knowing when and when not to apply this rigorous approach. There is a tendency at NASA to apply this rigorous risk mitigation strategy across the board. This can lead to lack of flexibility, nimbleness and lost opportunities when we can’t react fast enough to emerging opportunities. You have to have mechanisms in place to capture great ideas, emerging lower risk opportunities, and a streamlined path to action.

SPEAKING.COM: How can leaders facilitate better collaboration in their teams?

GARAN: One of the most important things leaders can do to facilitate collaboration is to reward it. One of the best ways to reward collaboration is to embrace and enact the collaborative solutions that are developed. One of the fastest ways to destroy collaboration is to treat it as a buzz word and just give it lip service.

I have seen CEOs profess to teams that they are to tackle a challenge through collaboration but then propose their own solution and squash any dissension to the leader’s proposal. Collaboration is built on trust. Trust that everyone is cooperating for the greater good of the organization. Trust that people will do what they promise. And, trust that folk’s time isn’t being wasted by a false show of collaboration.

SPEAKING.COM: How can people build trust, especially in diverse times?

GARAN: Trust is built by finding the common ground. The easiest way to find the common ground is from a platform of awe and wonder.

The International Space Station was built in space by fifteen nations. Some of these nations weren’t always the best of friends. Some were on opposite sides of the Cold War and opposite sides of the Space Race. Some even fought wars against each other. But somehow these nations found a way to set aside their differences and achieve something amazing in space. How we did that in the International Space Station program was to set aside fear and together we embraced the awe and wonder of space exploration.

Motivation is usually sparked through either fear or awe and wonder. Starting from a foundation of fear divides us and closes the mind, cutting us off from others with whom we share challenges and it separates us from the solutions they bring. Starting from a foundation of awe and wonder on the other hand, opens the mind to new ideas and solutions and encourages collaboration with others.

Starting with a foundation of awe and wonder made the ISS partners willing to seek out and find the common ground. We sought out those things that we agreed on and used those to build a relationship and a foundation of trust that we can now use to start to address the things we don’t agree on. You don’t have to be in space to have a foundation of awe and wonder. We are surrounded by it constantly.

SPEAKING.COM: Can you describe some trends that are going to have a profound positive effect on society?

GARAN: The entire technology and business landscape has changed and trends are developing that if embraced and accelerated can have profound positive effects on the trajectory of society.

The changes we’ve seen are partially due to positive things like revolutionary technical innovations, new powerful ways to reach consumers and customers, an explosion of collaborative tools (some powered by blockchain and other distributed technologies), also AI, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, new materials, new sensors tied to the Internet of Things and many other positive trends that together are all rewriting the fundamentals of business.

But the change is also caused by the disruption and uncertainty that is all around us. We are living through very uncertain times and there are many factors impacting our business operations. Everything from Brexit and the instability of the EU, US political divisions and gridlock, to trade wars, to the refugee crisis, to terrorism, and much, much more. These changes and uncertainty can cause us to shrink and become more conservative in our approaches or we can see them as opportunities.

In order to successfully capitalize on the opportunities that are all around us we need to take a holistic approach and strive to see how everything fits together. We need to understand that technological innovations don’t happen by accident they come from careful planning and engineering. One of the best ways to navigate the uncertainty that’s all around us is through collaboration that leads to shared strength. The way to see the path forward is to zoom out to a higher vantage point. A vantage point where all the pieces of the puzzle come into view, who has them and what picture they paint for our businesses and society as a whole.

In my talks I put the changes we have seen in the technology and business landscape into a big picture perspective. I frame them in what I call an orbital perspective.

SPEAKING.COM: What are some ways the protecting the environment complements thriving businesses?

GARAN: You don’t have to be in space to realize that we live on a planet of finite resources and we need to reduce the rate at which we are using up non-renewable resources. Those businesses that do not take a sustainable business approach and are overly focused on short-term profit maximization at the expense of their long-term success will be at a massive disadvantage when key resources in their value chain become more and more scarce.

The good news is, protecting the environment and moving our businesses forward are not mutually exclusive. In fact they are complementary. We can take an environmentally sustainable business approach while developing new and exciting products & services, creating more jobs, and increasing profitability. More and more consumers are demanding environmentally conscious business practices.

In my work in sustainable development, I, at times, became frustrated by how we keep trying to address issues such as climate change, deforestation, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, etc. as stand-alone issues. In reality, they are only symptoms of an underlying root problem. The problem is that we don’t see ourselves as planetary. Notice I didn’t say global. That’s because we don’t live on a globe. Global is our computer networks; our financial networks, it’s abstract lines covering a sphere.

When I looked out of the window of the ISS, I saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life, I didn’t see the economy. The economy is a subsystem of society which in turn is part of the biosphere. That means our global economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the biosphere and not the other way round. But since our political, business, and cultural systems put the complete focus on growing the economy at all costs, and since our human-made systems treat everything including the very life support systems of our planet as the wholly owned subsidiary of the economy, it is obvious from the vantage point of space that we are living a lie.

We need to move from thinking Economy – Society – Planet , to Planet – Society – Economy. Our society is dependent on our planet and our economy is dependent on society. We need to reorganize and reprioritize these systems not out of any ideology or eco-philosophy, but rather because this is the reality of the world we live in.

SPEAKING.COM: What is social entrepreneurship and how can it affect massive change?

GARAN: True social entrepreneurship creates businesses that serve the needs of civilization first and foremost. These businesses are not seen as discrete entities operating in a vacuum but as interdependent nodes in a fabric of prosperity where everyone has the ability to live a good life in harmony with our planet’s biosphere and each other. They are businesses that take a long-term multi-generational view of investment and progress.

Business decisions that we are making right now have the incredible power to either destroy our world by clinging to a two-dimensional, us versus them mindset obsessed with competition, growth, and profit maximization at all costs. Or save it by embracing our interdependence, engaging in long-term thinking, and profound collaboration all wrapped in the blanket of empathy and compassion.

To bring leadership and technology speaker, Ron Garan to your organization, please contact Michael Frick at: Mike@Speaking.com