Hey, happy Monday!
How are you? Was it a good weekend?
June is one of my favorite months, not only because it splits the year exactly in half and the rest is all downhill, but mostly because it hosts the shortest nights of the year.
You have 15 hours of light so you can live! Isn’t it magnificent?
This month there are also two eclipses, a solstice and a meteor shower that will pass over our heads.
There does seem to be a lot of traffic in space these days, and I have to admit that I started paying attention to it only after the launch of Space X.
I asked myself, what can I learn from this extraordinary feat?
I’ll share my notes with you.
$1,410/kg
Just disappeared from my feed all the screenshots of the launch and photos of the astronauts, unfortunately replaced by completely black posts for something dramatic as if a painful bug suddenly surfaced in our society that we can’t put right 🙁
I was saying, after all those futuristic images, what is really the only thing that matters?
It is not the design of the suits or the UX of the cockpit that makes the matter so important, those are just the effects of theimpact of design on business.
The most important thing is, in my opinion, that number.
$1,410/kg: The cost of sending one kilogram of “something” from Earth into orbit..
This is what Growth Hackers call the OMTM. The One Metric That Matters..
OMTM is a very important concept. It is the number on which all teams focus their work. It is the number that the entire muscular effort of the organization helps to make real, or exceed.
The definition is by Alistair Coll, who in 2013 published Lean Analytics A must-have book on your desk. It is the most authoritative and the most accurate in describing how to install in your team a data-driven mindset and make data-driven decisions should you need to validate an initial idea, find the right customers, monetize your business…
Cost per kg is the only metric that matters to unlock the Space Economy, a business already worth $383 billion and estimated by Morgan Stanley to reach $1.1 trillion by 2040.
Stellar Value Network
Reducing costs in commercial space travel will change our lives. Each industry has its own, specific, “killer application” just waiting to become more affordable to make an impact in the world. (Autry, 2017)
Tourism, materials development, pharmaceuticals, energy, communication, security. That is why it is important to be there first.
Disruptive technologies are always under-performing in the short run. It’s not with this launch that Elon Musk will get (richer) … but reducing that number means unlocking an impressive potential for entrepreneurial activities in orbit. (Bloomberg)
As the rule goes, it is always the Value Network that shapes the cost structure of enterprises. Imagine the design effort aimed at making hardware as light and as high-performing as possible, and consequently how R&D costs had to be distributed.
For this reason, design was a key element in the successful launch, and what we see is just the tip of a huge iceberg.
The Space Dragon suit for example is not a suit, although it is constructed in a “tailored” manner for each pilot. It is part of the spacecraft itself. You sit in the chair and connect through a cable that carries data and oxygen. Watch the video in the Nasa’s official tweet and the post on Focus.
The UI is another surface effect. Imagine also the weight saved by all that plastic and metal that made up the Shuttle’s controls compared to the monitors we all saw installed.
We witnessed the finest example of how all teams can work in perfect alignment.
The riskiest strategy
A report from Texas Tech University illustrates the need for the U.S. to arrive as quickly as possible at an economically viable business case for on-demand flights in order to maintain an otherwise endangered competitive advantage.
And the risk is precisely in NASA’s business model, which like all government agencies, even the best managed ones, does not have the correct economic incentives to lower its costs.
The only solution was to access the market that rewards competition and thus efficiency.
Precisely demonstrating the pressure to achieve the goal, NASA made the most dangerous choice in selecting among the competitors the best performing but also the most technically risky technological solution by giving the “newest technology” a higher score in the competition.
The exact opposite of any company that avoids at all costs, or does everything possible to mitigate, technical risk before bringing the product to market.
Often the stakes are so high that you cannot play by the rules…
Laser focus
The ability to align the entire organization to achieve the one metric that matters I believe is the greatest lesson that remains when the pyrotechnic effects of this mission end.
The power of simplifying the reading of the market and consequently the way of making decisions by focusing on the one thing to do to win the game.
As you finish your coffee, click reply…
What is your only metric that matters for today?
Good work!
Make yourself heard.
