Astromanager LLC

Our latest blog post:

Tag: Business

  • Navigating the maze

    By this time next month, my regular paychecks will have stopped, to be replaced by something as yet not completely known, perhaps by nothing at all, but hopefully by something. A month ago, I lost my father; we weren’t particularly close, but he was my father and he was a life with his own dreams, scars, and sense of moving forward that is now extinguished. That’s sad no matter the relationship and getting this new perspective on his (and my own) life has taken time to process – time I had intended to prepare for that lost paycheck. I’m feeling OK, actually, going through things one at a time, with more of life unsettled than I would normally prefer.

    I decided some time ago I needed to do something else, something different, a different environment, with my career. I applied and interviewed for a couple jobs – feeling like I was more interviewing than being interviewed; I wanted something different, not just a different color paycheck. I didn’t actually get any offers, and it probably appears like sour grapes to say I probably wouldn’t have accepted had I, so I won’t. But it was a good process and I learned things – about myself and my industry. For instance, I’ve now applied for a major facility Director position three times, to get invited to the panel interview each time, but never progressing beyond, and I now think I understand why. I also understand more about what’s important to me, what I am looking for in meaningful work, and what it would take to actually want and get such a position in the future, if that’s what I decide to do.

    So, what’s my current plan? I’ve started Astromanager LLC and will be doing my own thing. I wrote myself a business plan so I could better lay out my thoughts for myself and to explain to others. I hope it will be a good start, but I doubt it will be an accurate roadmap to what actually happens in the end. I’m hoping to spend <~50% of my time doing meaningful, but temporary project-related work for astronomy – helping to get projects started, or through some tough spots, or filling in a temporary gap or need. With my experiences in the science, observations/operations, and technical/project sides of astronomy, I think I can fill a variety of needed roles and offer groups a way to seize opportunities they might not have otherwise. Is there a market for this? If there isn’t, I think there should be, and judging by the inquiries I’ve received already, I’m optimistic there is a real mutual need here I can address. I’m really grateful for the support I’ve received so far and in addition to fearing I won’t have enough work offers, I am beginning to fear I may have too many.

    I want to spend the other ~50% of my time on my coaching and training material – a lot of which I’ve discussed here already. I’ve got content on workplace productivity, anti-productivity, project management, leadership, teamwork, systems engineering, and personal and professional growth. I think there’s relevance here to a more general audience beyond astronomy that I’d like to explore. I also think there’s value in continuing to bring these ideas to astronomy and the broader technical/academic world, particularly to students and those in early career stages. A colleague told me today that she thought our training teaches us the technical aspects of our industry, but it doesn’t teach us how to be humans; how to relate to others; how to get our ideas across and accept others’, etc. I’ve learned, and am still learning, most of this the hard way. How great it would have been to figure this stuff out earlier. I’d like to help others learn some of my lessons earlier than I did.

    Contributing to both efforts, I’ve got too many ideas for new content I want to generate, blogs I want to write, books I want to publish, videos I want to make, and communities I want to engage with. It’s both exciting and scary and with an office full of boxes from my father’s estate, and soon to be from my old office, it’s all a bit jumbled right now. I’ve got a business plan, a great network of friends and colleagues, and a path through the boxes. I think I’m going to make it and I hope you’ll be here for, and help me along, the journey.

    Mahalo, and aloha.

    Scot

  • What can science bring business?

    Although I normally think and write about what the commercial business (aka the real) world can bring to astronomy management, I thought I would take a new look at the subject and consider what science can bring the (real) world of business management. Are there aspects of  science and astronomy  that can be applied to the business world?  In short,  yes.

    A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to visit the Vietnamese company, Viettel. Viettel is one of the fastest growing telecommunications companies in the world and I was very impressed with their leadership and their company’s vision and culture.  The company has 8 very visible values that seem to directly reflect the marriage of the scientific approach within the commercial world framework.  The translations I found differ, but their 8 basic values can be summarized as:

    1. The data decide the right answer.
    2. Learn through success and failure.
    3. Change is the norm; adapt quickly.
    4. Innovation is life.
    5. Think about the system, not just the parts.
    6. Combine the East and the West – look at things from different perspectives.
    7. Exploit the military tradition and manner: discipline, unity, perseverance, decisiveness, thoroughness.
    8. Viettel is a family.

    I really can’t think of a better way to put it. These principles capture the data-based, experimental, innovation driven approach from science with a systems engineering, multiple-perspective, disciplined outlook in an organization that treats its employees as family. That sounds a lot like the marriage of science and business, fairly consistent with my own management and leadership goals as mentioned in a previous post.  Some benefits of the scientific approach, which Viettel seems to understand, include the objective competing of different ideas and different solutions in order to find the best solution.  The search for the truth is more important than any one person being right.  In working together to explore multiple ways of solving a problem, we create alignment in purpose and a focus on providing the best results for the organization.  We do not make decisions based on opinions, but on facts and data.

    Viettel also acknowledges that learning comes from failures as well as successes.  Combined with their focus on objective data, I imagine they explore why their successes worked as well as why their failures failed, and learn from each.  My personality type, I’ve read, typically views failures as incomplete successes. That characterization may have been meant a bit facetiously, but the Viettel principles show the value of such a world view.  If we use the data at hand, make an objective decision that ultimately proves wrong, we have learned something valuable – perhaps as valuable or more than we would have learned had we got it right instead. We try, we fail, we learn, we improve, we move on.  (The downside to that approach of course arises if you fail to learn from the failure, and simply reclassify it as a success. That is not what I am advocating.)

    I think this ties into a concept I have been hearing more and more about lately of radical transparency, but more on that in a future post.

  • So, I finished my MBA. Was it worth it?

    Yes!

    22 months and countless hours later, I finished my MBA program from the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. It was probably more work than I expected, but I also got more out of it than I expected. I could have put in less effort and still completed the degree, but as with anything in life, you tend to get what you put into it and putting in more effort than the minimum needed, I think, was highly worthwhile. What I expected from this program was to learn how business is done, how managers manage, and how leaders lead out in the “real world” in ways that I could apply to the business of astronomy.

    The program certainly did all this, but there was a lot more. I learned many practical things about personal finance including stocks, bonds, negotiation tactics and strategies that were only obvious after I discovered them, and a bunch of other stuff I figured I should learn about some day, but never did.  I even now own a genuine financial calculator, although it is RPN, so I’m not a total sellout :).  Perhaps, even more importantly, I learned about myself – I learned more about who I am, why I am the way I am, and what I want to do with my leadership and management initiatives.

    For one of my last classes, I ended up defining the purpose of my leadership as being:

    …to combine the data-based, scientific method of problem solving with
    the human elements of trust, respect, and opportunity for all in order to form truly healthy teams and organizations.

    I may still need some work on this purpose, but I think it’s a pretty good place to start. I want to help create, vibrant, healthy organizations in astronomy, specifically working to set up environments that allow people to perform at their best, whether they be scientific, technical, administrative, or other support staff. Similarly, I enjoyed bringing scientific rigor to my co-MBA students who worked in all kinds of non-profit and for-profit industries and were not well-versed in the scientific method. There is a lot of potential fulfilment in this line of work as well. Bringing the best organizational aspects of the rest of the world to astronomy, and the best analytic approach of astronomy to the rest of the  world. This purpose helps me understand the two worlds I try to live in: the scientific and the professional management/leadership worlds.

    Shidler DLEMBA Class of 2014

    And finally, I spent 22 months collaboratively and intensely working with 29 of the best managers and leaders in Hawaii. These people, my co-students, come from all backgrounds and fields, but shared this one crazy thing in common: a desire to learn more about how to run, manage and lead better organizations so strong that they agreed to give up their evenings and weekends to sit in front of their computers and join forces with each other to complete this program. While I may have been able to complete this program without them, it would not have been nearly as much fun or rewarding. I learned from each of their stories and each of their industries, as much or more as I learned from the faculty. They are all on my personal Board of Directors.

    astronomerBOD

    Another sign of Scot’s dual interest in astronomy and effective management and leadership is portrayed through Myers Briggs type assessments which, depending on when he takes the test, result in either INTJ (code-named “Scientist”) or ENTJ (code-named “Manger/Leader”).  This whole astronomy management thing is starting to make sense.

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