INTRODUCTION

Harnessing the Power of the Moonshot Mindset

Not many 16-year-olds get to work at NASA, but there I was: a summer high school intern working at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. I was a part of SHARP (Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program), working on the International Space Station Alpha (ISSA) initiative, and everywhere I looked were nerds—with pocket protectors, which I didn’t even know anyone used. They talked in some kind of unique language, with acronyms for everything, and used words in new ways I didn’t understand. It took me several weeks, for example, to realize “payload” was their word for “satellite.” The place, as I affectionately refer to it now, was a total nerd oasis. And I loved it!

My first day there, they gave me a thick folder containing packets and booklets with the straightforward name of “Information Kit.” It contained massive amounts of paper—yes, it was so long ago it was printed on paper—and contained things like the Kennedy Space Center strategic plan, a map of the series of buildings I had to navigate, a SHARP student handbook, and other documents that would help me understand what my job was and how I should do it. I lugged this “kit” around with me every day that summer.

I spent my first days looking through this information to learn as fast as I could what was happening around me. One particularly helpful item was a thick little book that contained all those acronyms—things like VAB, or the “vehicle assembly building,” which was the building where they put the space shuttle together. (Well, the book wasn’t that little, but it fit in my purse.) Whenever anyone used an acronym, I rushed to find out what it meant before someone used another. Part of my job was to take notes and measurements as my team worked to open a new building to support the construction of the space station. The project was massive—we were literally working to put someone into space. Hard to believe that was me working at the place that put a man on the moon. It was at the same time humbling and inspiring.

TWO ESSENTIALS FOR ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS: AMBITION AND PROCESS

I learned two important lessons working with nerds. First, I was a nerd too. I had always been nerd-curious, focused on my studies and gravitating toward the sciences. But, as a young Black woman, I wasn’t able to identify with nerd culture. A nerd was a skinny white man, not a short Black girl. After working at NASA, I knew there was a place for me among the nerds. This insight helped me take every other step in my life—from studying engineering and computer science in college to working in e-commerce at GE, and even running a technology-focused nonprofit a decade later.

The second lesson I learned was related to that nondescript Information Kit: everything was so complex, but that didn’t mean everything had to be overwhelming. To my teenage mind lugging that kit around with me each day seemed burdensome, but it actually represented a distillation of the massive amount of logistical information and processes that went into building the space station. That manual walked me through all the possible complexities, from what certain acronyms meant to a process that would lead to discoveries, like how to assemble pieces in a way that would eventually create a machine that could sustain human life in space. While our goal was a literal moonshot, we had step-by-step plans that helped us build our shared vision. From the lowliest intern (me) to the most senior leader, we were undeterred by aiming for what had never been done and motivated by what we could create together.

FIGURE I.1 The author at NASA

There were thousands of people working to launch International Space Station Alpha into space, all with various tasks and responsibilities. And each task, every step, was coordinated and integrated—even something as small as my measurement tasks—to achieve a broader, bold goal. Though my Information Kit may have seemed a burden at the time, I know now it was just as critical to the overall success of the shuttle launch as the external tank and boosters that propelled the astronauts into space, or the oxygen that kept them alive. It was a part of a broader system of checklists and meeting structures and procedures that together led to the bold action of sending a person into space. Achieving bold results requires a moonshot mindset, but also an information kit (or two or three). We tend to forget this when we are building businesses or trying to change society. When people achieve big things, they are called “visionaries” because of their big ideas. Steve Jobs brought us the personal computer through his genius. Albert Einstein brought us a whole new way to think about the universe. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired a nation to change. But while those men were visionaries, they also had hundreds and sometimes thousands of people working with them to achieve their big, bold goal.

FIGURE I.2 The author’s NASA Information Kit

This dual appreciation of both the mindset and what it takes to achieve that mindset is missing from much of our work in business and society. We may focus too much on the end goal and not enough on setting the right targets to help us get there. We may have big ideas but be unable to execute on them (or undervalue the work that it takes to achieve them) because we lack the information kit that will lead the way to getting there.

If we can recognize and harness the power of both the moonshot mindset and the information kits it takes, we can build anything. We can change how we do business. We can change the world.

FROM NASA TO GE: MOONSHOT MINDSET AT WORK IN A BLUE-CHIP CORPORATION

My first job out of school was as an analyst at GE. GE was rapidly expanding then, acquiring companies left and right they felt would be a good fit for the company. Some of the aspects of the business seemed ludicrous. During my time there, I analyzed credit card services, mortgage banking, and the manufacture of locomotive engine parts. Looking back, the expansive and seemingly ridiculous portfolio of the fictional GE’s vice president of East Coast Television, Jack Donaghy, from the TV show 30 Rock, was not very different from how the company operated.

But as a young analyst at GE, I soon learned that while the products and services of GE’s different business units might seem incongruous, there was always a common thread that tied everything together: process and culture. Their information kits were essentially the same, regardless of what you were working on. We received endless PowerPoint slides that walked us through any process—from acquiring a $2 million business to managing a team—supplemented with support from senior leaders and relentless training to build GE’s version of “moonshot mindset” culture, which at the time translated to “be the best or leave.” This symbiosis of process and culture led to a high-performing workforce that didn’t shy away from thinking big, or doing what it took to execute on those big, bold plans.

I was successful at GE. I became a Six Sigma Black Belt, learning the famed process improvement tools and techniques to help our business units grow and succeed at whatever we tried to do, whether it was an acquisition of a mortgage bank in Mexico or the rollout of new engine products for a high-speed train. I learned a lot in college, but at GE I was able to apply what I learned and see what I could achieve. I was making more money than my parents did, and I was on a trajectory to lead a business division in a short amount of time. So I did what most people in my position would have done: I went to business school to try to get to that next level.

It’s here where normally you would read about how there was one moment where I stopped and looked around at my life and realized that I wasn’t fulfilled in my corporate job. That I needed to give back and help others more than I was doing in a big, faceless multinational company. I will admit, as a Black woman and the first in my immediate family to go to college, there were moments where I asked myself, “Whom did I leave behind to be successful? Whom did I betray or abandon?” I was mindful of the platform I had as one of the few Black women in GE, and I held some responsibility to do more because of that.

But, when I went off to graduate school, I fully expected to return to GE and run an international business unit, continuing on my path. I was happy where I was, and I knew that I was achieving big, bold things. But after a unique opportunity at business school, I realized that by using the tools and techniques I had learned at NASA and GE, I could aim for an even bigger moonshot.

SHIFTING GEARS: MOONSHOT MINDSET AT WORK IN A NATIONAL NONPROFIT

My summer internship at business school was to support a growing national nonprofit, Year Up, as they developed a business and expansion plan. Year Up worked with young people who had graduated from high school but did not have many opportunities after that. They put them through training to receive college credits and set them up with apprenticeships in technology companies to help with project management, IT, and other tasks. I knew I could be of help because these kids were essentially preparing for my first job at GE.

I must admit, I fell in love with Year Up. I saw myself and my family in every young person who walked through the doors. My summer project was to provide data on which regions of the country would be best targeted for expansion out of the Boston area, and the board was deciding between the DC area and New York City. After I delivered my analysis to the board at Year Up, I thought I was done with the organization and it was back to GE for me. In the end, I am grateful that the founder, Gerald Chertavian—a successful tech entrepreneur and Wall Street banker—had other ideas.

The board ended up deciding on DC over New York City. With this decision made, Gerald called me into his office one day with a proposition: once I graduated from business school, he asked me to come work with him as the founding executive director of the first national expansion into the DC area.

I thought about it and realized I couldn’t pass it up. These young adults were dealing with some of the hardest challenges a person could face in life—many of them were working to provide for their families while trying to educate themselves and get a better job. Some had unstable housing situations and traveled hours by public transit just to get to work. They were not seen as the “typical” corporate employee, but Gerald and his team were working to change that.

Creating the environment where talented and often overlooked youth could amass the experiences they needed to succeed seemed, to some, too daunting and impossible to achieve. But, because of what I had learned at GE and what I had seen at NASA, I knew that it wasn’t. The process was complicated, but it was doable. It just required the right information kits.

Yet setting up and establishing these processes and procedures was harder than what I had experienced at GE or even NASA. We were tackling problems that wouldn’t be fixed by reinforcing structures with different types of metal, or through different lines of code. We were working to support youth who faced barriers to success that were deeply ingrained in the structure of our society. It required working with people to change their perceptions of who these young people were and to give them a chance they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Despite these challenges, I raised over $20 million and we grew from placing 22 students in internships at 8 companies to placing over 1,000 students at over 40 internship partners, including the White House. I was one proud momma. Who wouldn’t be? But one morning, after seven years, I pulled up outside of our nondescript offices on Wilson Boulevard in Northern Virginia. I looked up at the windows to the second floor of the office building where our staff was already working away. We had new hills to climb, more young people to serve, and more important work to do. And then I was hit by an unshakeable feeling: I was not the one to take us there.

THE NEXT MOONSHOT: HARNESSING THE POWER OF SOCIAL IMPACT

Where did this feeling come from? I wanted to do the work at Year Up, because, in part, I knew that the young adults we were helping were like me and my family. I came from a jumbled background of opportunity and disadvantage. On my dad’s side, my grandparents were from Guyana and Japan; my mom’s family was Black from Long Beach, California. My father was the youngest of five children and his brothers and sisters are traditionally successful—teacher, banker, marketing executive, engineer. As a teenage father, instead of going to college, my dad joined the military in order to support his young family. Meanwhile, my mom (and later my stepmom as well) came from families where no one had ever gone to college, women often had babies young, and everyone pitched in to raise the children.

All of these factors shaped who I am today. My aunts and uncles and my paternal grandmother provided a lot of my initial upbringing. They took me to libraries and museums, where I discovered that the world was full of potential and possibility; they instilled in me the importance of education that would stay with me for the rest of my life. My dad’s family showed me that there’s a big world out there, and I was always looking for new opportunities to learn and grow. In contrast, my mother taught me to find joy and laughter in the midst of sadness and to trust and believe in the good in the world even when you have been hurt by those closest to you. My father and stepmom taught me discipline and responsibility. Under their roof, I learned to work hard, admit my mistakes, and channel my gifts toward something bigger than myself. As the firstborn child, niece, and granddaughter, I was given my first and best opportunity—the commitment, support, and love of a diverse family structure.

What ran consistently through all of my diverse familial upbringing was a headstrong notion that things can change if you push hard enough. My parents and their families were always pushing to secure a better life for me and my siblings, and they never accepted the idea that how life was is what it had to be. This belief laid the foundation for what would become my moonshot mindset and set me on the path to my career. It pushed me to learn as much as I could and try as hard as I could.

If my professional experiences gave me the information kits I needed to get things done, it was my family that first instilled within me the moonshot mindset that helped me set my sights on what I wanted to achieve and to always go big.

So, when I sat in my car in front of the Year Up offices on Wilson Boulevard, it was this belief in change and my ability to do more that pushed me to move on. Year Up was well on its way to achieving its moonshot, but I knew that there was something else I needed to work on—my own moonshot.

What I had seen at NASA, GE, and Year Up was that the fundamental process for change was the same, no matter if that was a big change or something smaller. The work of assembling an engine for a train has the same fundamental components as trying to put someone into space, it just requires a different set of resources and scope of work.

So I asked myself, while sitting in my car in front of the Year Up office, if I knew how to achieve big things, why shouldn’t I set my sights higher? Why not try to hit a bigger moon, higher in the sky?

CHANGING HOW THE WORLD DOES BUSINESS

During my time at Year Up, I saw what it took to achieve substantive, positive changes in the lives of people who needed them. At GE, I had seen what a company could do with the right processes and ambition to create a hugely successful business. I knew that the process behind both of those things was essentially the same.

Yet I also saw that there was a “siloed” nature between the world of business and work that had social impact. Part of the reason I was so successful and raised so much money at Year Up was because I was able to seamlessly move between the business world and the scrappy, out-in-the-streets nonprofit world. And while I was leading Year Up-National Capital Region, I was out in the streets talking to anyone who would listen.

There wasn’t a corporate boardroom or wine-and-cheese gala I hadn’t attended. I connected with the corporate leaders in DC, many of whom were the people behind the first dot-com boom, because I could speak their language and translate what we were trying to do through Year Up and why they should support it. But oftentimes, after I left those large houses in the Virginia suburbs and took off my high heels for the drive home, it astounded me that I needed a translator. Year Up’s work was about creating opportunity for young people and breaking down the barriers that society has set up for them. These geniuses of the internet were also breaking down barriers and creating opportunities; the difference was that they did it with technology. We were talking about the same things, so why didn’t we all speak the same language?

The reason for this divide between business outcomes and social outcomes is longstanding and deep-seated in our Western capitalist society. We have been living in an era defined by the Milton Friedman’s maxim “the business of business is business.” Business leaders see their role as maximizing profit and creating the most value for their customers, employees, and shareholders. Why should they be concerned with anything else? With these profits, the corporate leaders who maximize profits can then choose to give their funds away to help improve society.

This division of labor among the sectors has been essentially unchanged since the first major era of philanthropy began with people like J.D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. But we are beginning to see those walls come down. Consumers are looking more and more toward businesses to be social and political leaders,² and companies are facing increased pressure from boycotts and digital organizing to make statements in support of or against social causes.³ The millennial generation, in particular, is more interested in civic engagement and giving back and is making consumption decisions based on those values.⁴

Yet businesses continue to treat social impact as a “side dish” rather than the main course of their operations. I saw this working with companies through Year Up. Some saw our work with them as a charitable act—something they were doing to our students to help out “disadvantaged youth.” Few saw it for what it really was, or could be—a talent recruitment tool to gain highly qualified staff with a high probability for long-term retention.

Year Up was offering something that broke down the silo between business and nonprofits. It gave companies a chance to improve their bottom line while also improving society. Time and time again I saw this offer accepted, but without companies understanding what it really meant for them. I knew that until the business community saw things like Year Up for what they really were—a true win-win—we would not only fail to solve society’s biggest challenges, but also fail to unleash the true power of business and the capitalist engine that drives it.

As I sat that day in front of the Year Up offices on Wilson Boulevard, I knew that I had a new challenge to tackle. I began to formulate a new moonshot in my mind: to change how the world does business.

WHAT YOU’LL GAIN FROM THE SOCIAL IMPACT ADVANTAGE

As you explore the book, it’s important to keep in mind that:

•   Achieving big things requires two components: an ambitious mindset and processes to achieve your goals.

•   Businesses do not meet their full potential because they are unable to recognize social issues as an opportunity to grow and expand.

•   Businesses can unlock their full potential by responding to increasing pressure from consumers and employees to respond to social trends.

I certainly have not yet achieved my bold moonshot, but I now see changing how the world does business as my life’s work. I and those who have joined with me in this goal have made strong moves, and I am hopeful that we can continue to unlock the true potential of business to both solve problems and generate profit.

Over the years, through my impact investment and advisory firm, CapEQ, I have helped dozens of companies change their practices to improve their bottom line while also improving society. I’ve worked with major industry players like Walmart, the Carlyle Group, Athleta, and others to help them leverage the power of social impact—or what I’ll define in the next chapter more specifically as “equitable impact”—and engage with their customers. I have seen what businesses can do when you no longer think of impact as a side dish, but the main course.

Year Up is an excellent example of this. In the past decade, Year Up has expanded to over 250 companies, including over 40 of the Fortune 100.⁵ They have an 85 percent retention rate, and their graduates have achieved an over 50 percent wage gain six to nine months after graduation.⁶

There are more ways businesses can leverage opportunities like Year Up to unlock their full potential while also responding to increasing pressure from consumers and employees to respond to social trends. In this book I provide the lessons I’ve distilled from more than a decade working with Fortune 500 clients, government agencies, philanthropies, and others to help change the way the world does business. Like the International Space Station, doing this may seem daunting, but following this simple process can get you on your way.

This book provides the lessons distilled from more than a decade of work with Fortune 500 clients, government agencies, philanthropies, and others to help change the way the world does business. To change how you do business and unlock your business’s full potential, consider changes in these three areas:

1.   How you make money

2.   How you spend money

3.   How you invest in your people

Chapter by chapter, you will not only discover why these three changes are vital to unlocking the potential in your company, but also how to implement these changes to create your own information kit and foster a moonshot mindset. Here’s what you’ll find:

•   Chapter 1: Why Your Customers Want You to Be Good, and What You Can Do About It. This chapter is an overview of why customers want you to be good, and the three areas businesses can consider to respond to modern social and environmental challenges. It will also provide context for why these shifts are needed today as the business climate continues to shift based on consumer and employee preferences.

•   Chapter 2: Achieving Equitable Impact Through Your Business Model. Businesses are increasingly being held to certain social standards and values by consumers. By shifting consumer-facing activities to align with these values, your business can increase consumer acquisition and revenue.

•   Chapter 3: Achieving Equitable Impact Through Your Spending. Most companies do not consider their spending as an opportunity for strengthening their bottom line or creating impact. Yet working and partnering with under-resourced and underfunded companies, such as Black-owned businesses, can provide untapped value.

•   Chapter 4: Achieving Equitable Impact by Investing in Your People. Staffing and talent acquisition are some of the largest ongoing challenges for businesses. Investing in your employees and finding new talent pools to tap into can increase employee retention and productivity. Offering unique benefits can also reduce turnover.

•   Chapter 5: Build Your CapEQ™ to Make an Equitable Impact. This chapter offers an overview of the CapEQ™ continuum, which provides a granular assessment of how well companies are equipped to implement the ideas in the book. It will also give specific examples of companies along the continuum.

•   Conclusion: Changing How YOU Do Business. Here, I summarize the other chapters and conclude by calling on you to implement the recommendations provided in the book and to join a community of practitioners online.

Throughout these chapters, you will find case studies and resources to help you and your team apply the lessons to your business. There is also data and trend analysis to help you make the case to yourself, your boss, or your team for why to remain competitive equitable impact should be the “main course” of your operations. Grounding all of these chapters is what I call the “Good Business Worksheet,” which will help you apply what you have learned directly to your company. You can complete this worksheet by yourself, but I recommend you do it with your team to help you get agreement as to the best ways to harness the full potential of your business through equitable impact. If you do the worksheet as a team, I’ve included some sample agendas to help you facilitate a conversation.

Although the primary audience for this book is those working at for-profit companies, there is advice for anyone looking to change organizational practices and improve society, with particular relevance for investors (individual, philanthropic, or institutional) as well as government officials looking to engage differently with companies. If you want to skip around, I recommend investors start with Chapter 3 and those who work at a government agency or nonprofit start with Chapter 4.

If you are an entrepreneur looking to start a business—welcome! I’m so glad you are using this book so early in the life of your business. Using these tools from the beginning can help you instill the practice of creating equitable impact throughout all aspects of your company. You’ll want to start with Chapter 2 to ground your business model in these concepts. Chapter 3 will be relevant as you ramp up your supply chain, and Chapter 4 will become important as you start to hire your first employees.

Let’s get started!