Lessons from the recreation of Apollo 11 Mission Control

I’m something of a space geek.

As a kid I grew up watching shuttle launches on TV and when I was 8 even visited the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I watched the horror of the Challenger disaster on the small little TV in my parents’ bedroom in 1983 and in disbelief of the disintegration on atmospheric reentry of Discovery in 2003.

Whilst I was not born during the golden period of the Apollo missions (yes kids — really!) it’s something that has continued to fascinate me even as we lose the very people who defined the space race.

And so the announcement this week that NASA has painstakingly restored the Apollo mission control room for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing has made me thrilled me to bits! Apparently it’s so good the famous Gene Kranz has commented that he can hear the voices of the Apollo 11 crew. Amazing!

It got me thinking. Mission Control can certainly be a room. But it’s mainly a function. A place, a role — to bring together all the various disparate pieces that make up a complex organisation. Bringing all those stakeholders into the same place where they can talk and vastly shorten the communication channels is so crucial in a growing business like Digitalbridge.

But mission control is utterly pointless without that single unifying thing — the thing that people get up every morning today.

Without a mission, there is no point in mission control.

Whilst not rocket science (#boom #dadjoke) you sometimes see people get all het up, passionate and energised in solving hard and complex technical problems but without actually defining the mission.

A mission is your objective — what you are trying to achieve. With a mission you set out that objective and gather together the people you need to make that mission a success.

As CEO of a scaling business our mission to help anyone design beautiful living spaces for themselves and their family, no matter how little design experience and skills they have is the reason we get out of bed in the morning. It’s the reason we solve really hard problems and is the purpose for which we gather together each and every day.

The mission — as central as it is — is only one part of the puzzle.

The single most important thing a business can do is articulate strategic narrative of why they exist and to tell the story.

That’s what we’re doing to do in a future post — tell everyone the story we tell our customers so that other businesses can learn from our journey.

Hope it’ll be of value!

David