The right stuff?

This week I went to my first ever book launch. Dallas Campbell (BBC science presenter, actor, great guy) launched Space Journal: Art, Science and Cosmic Exploration, and it is one of the most beautiful books I've ever held. It's sitting on my desk right now, and rather than checking my phone whilst on a break from work, I am flicking through these beautiful pages.

Sitting next to it is The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, which I'm re-reading at the moment as research for a keynote I'm developing. If you haven't read it, it's about the Mercury 7, the first American astronauts, selected in 1958. Test pilots. The best of the best. Chosen through a process so physically and psychologically brutal that candidates reportedly felt more like lab rats than pilots.

What NASA was looking for was a very specific kind of person: individually brilliant, at their physical peak, emotionally… unreadable. They wanted someone who could hold it together alone when everything went wrong, and never, ever show that it was hard.

The lone hero. Cool under pressure. What Tom Wolfe called "the right stuff."

This process of selection worked for those first high risk missions into the unknown. But through the different eras of space, the selection process and psychological training for astronauts has changed as the missions have.

The question it leaves me with is one I think applies well beyond spaceflight: what are we selecting for in our organisations right now, and is it actually the right stuff for the era we're in?

PS. If you want to treat yourself, go and buy Dallas's book (no commission!). Tim Peake called it "a breathtaking glimpse at the margins of space history”.

P.P.S. The question above is one I explore in my keynote, The Tipping Points of Human Performance. If that's something your organisation needs, reply to this email or grab a time to chat