“Your mind is like a parachute: If it isn’t open, it doesn’t work.”
Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 astronaut
Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, July 20th, 1969.
It all began with the open mind and huge vision of one man.
On May 25, 1961, President John F Kennedy told Congress that the US “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
On July 20th, 1969, that vision was realised.
This came only 20 days after the first time any NASA mission had taken someone out of the earth’s atmosphere, and then only for a 15 minute sub-orbital flight.
JFK, however, had the vision to restore confidence in his country that had been dented by the space race and cold war with Russia. He believed that this lunary goal could play a key role in building on the ability of Americans to innovate and achieve. The lunar landing was a massive vision and one that took 400,000 people to achieve, but many historians now look back on it as leading an epochal shift for the USA in the 1960s.
Now you may say you are not JFK, but I challenge you to be your own JFK.
On the front page of this site, I say: “Can you see your way through to your full potential? What’s beyond the horizon of your business, your career, your identity? I want to help the leaders of today fulfil that promise”.
What’s beyond your horizon? What could you truly achieve for yourself and others if you are at your most Hungry, Humble, Brave and Open all at the same time?
Someone asked me this week if the type of leadership needed to lead from Purpose and achieve transformative change is only in some of us, if some cannot be coached and supported to achieve their potential. I believe that, whilst some are more ready than others, such leadership is within all of us. All of us.
50 years ago today humanity stepped onto the Moon.
What “moonshot” can you open your mind to consider where you can lead and that will be looked back upon in 50 more years?