Apollo Leadership Lessons: Powerful Business Insights for Executives

by Dick Richardson

America’s decade-long effort to put a man on the moon is a compelling story. Like any great narrative it’s filled with hope and disappointment, villains and heroes, greed and sacrifice. At every step it’s the story of leadership. With unique access to key leaders and NASA resources, author Dick Richardson has captured the leadership insights of our journey to the moon. These lessons are told through the lens of the people who were there–the executives, flight directors, and astronauts. Many contributed directly to this book. Richardson helps us see them as real people facing real opportunities and challenges. You may not go to the moon, but this book will help you apply NASA’s leadership lessons to your company’s mission. ABOUT THE AUTHORDick Richardson has been recognized with numerous awards in leadership development and learning. After years in the corporate world, he founded Experience to Lead, offering unique experiences to improve the leadership of individuals, teams, and organizations. His firm offers a variety of immersive programs for senior leaders, including the Apollo Leadership Experience. His relationships with NASA, the Smithsonian Institute, and Space Center Houston have allowed unique behind-the-scenes access for executives to learn the inner workings of the nation’s space program. Apollo Leadership Lessons is a direct result of his work with NASA executives and astronauts.

244 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2019

About the author

Dick is an executive leadership development consultant and owner of Experience to Lead. He has worked with The Conference Board for over ten years designing, and delivering experiential programs including the Apollo Program with NASA; Gold Medal in partnership with the USOC and numerous battlefield programs.

Prior to working as an independent consultant, he was IBM Director, Executive and Management Development, responsible for leadership curriculum for all IBM managers and executives. Dick’s international experience includes being the Manager of Management Development for IBM Asia based in Hong Kong, and other overseas assignments. Dick holds two patents for innovations in organizational learning and numerous industry awards. Dick was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year in the 17th Annual American Business Awards.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has lots of ideas around leadership in multiple dimensions. The ideas are presented in a simple way with tangible examples from NASA’s own projects and especially the journey to landing on the moon. The stories, lessons and examples are told through the lens of different people (the execs, flight directors, astronauts and more.) Each chapter has sections where the author goes one layer deeper into the story. These were some of my favorite sections either for some interesting NASA fact or how one idea might seem interesting but then the flipside is also interesting. For example there’s a chapter around learning from failure but then the author highlights how it’s important not to over index on this and that NASA does post-mortems for both failures and successes. This book can seem deceptively simple but sometimes the most profound ideas are the simplest ones. Just because they are simple to understand doesn’t mean they are simple to do. I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of leadership and learning more about NASA, especially at such an interesting time in history.

[Darya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting ideas on leadership. Book provides very good motivation and path for personal development. I liked the book for easy explanations, interesting good for thought.