… another late Thursday night in the lab. 8 weeks into debugging the new Space Shuttle display system we were designing… 6 weeks late. As before, I had a great partner – quiet – a real engineer – focused and determined. We knew we had it… but each time we hit Start it would crash. And… if we didn’t get it by the end of the week, the ‘real engineers’ would fly in.
Darius and the boys from South Carolina had a similar path. Night after night, grinding out one false start after another. Playing music they knew was good, maybe great, but just wasn’t catching on. Doubt creeps in, rewriting things they knew were good, but still hadn’t gotten the attention they desired. Then… the agent, the call, the studio, recording these songs that had been polished for 8 years into…
… one of the best-selling albums of all time. 22x Platinum, Double Diamond, and a Number 1 album… On the album, Time asks the version of this I keep circling … what makes a thing last, when so much else does not?
My hunch was the pattern we saw made no sense… unless, 6 of the 16 memory chips (my part of the design) were bad. Dave thought it was crazy, but I replaced them, hit the button…
… MACSBUG. Motorola Advanced Computer Systems deBUGger. It was alive!!! It worked!!! We cheered … to no one… just us, just the satisfaction of knowing it worked… wonder delivered again. Friday morning, we demoed it to the very managers who had lost confidence in us… who now depended on us, a couple of 20-somethings to help them win the contract for the Space Station.
… have you stepped back and seen what you are doing in a different way? Up against the budget, the constraints of the people that are not quite what you want, the partners that don’t deliver… the grind. Where is wonder missing in your work leading teams to deliver the amazing systems your business needs, and you know are possible?
The Belonging you are building is the part that outlasts the quarter, the reorg, and the title on your door. The deliverables scroll off the screen. The afternoon someone felt they Belonged does not. You are building something quieter and more durable than the org chart, and you may be the only one who does not see it yet. In 10 years, no one will quote the roadmap. Someone will remember that you saw them. Who is that person … the name that just came to mind?
Your Simple… Not Easy move: get 1 person on your team to wonder what they will still be proud of in 10 years…
We ended up winning the Space Station computer contract, and our IBM PC in space still circles over your head every 90 minutes… but Belonging … and wonder… This is the part I came back for, and it is the work I do now, helping leaders build the thing that outlives the org chart. Link below to book 30 minutes.
The roadmap resets every year. The only thing you truly spend is … Time.
