Out of this world: what can your senior leaders learn from the space industry?

For me, any business leader who can engage in experiential learning is, in a word, lucky. It’s not only super enjoyable, but also a powerful way to break free from everyday routines. We often get too comfortable in our established habits, even when some aspects aren’t working for us and experiential learning offers a chance to step outside that comfort zone and embrace new experiences.

I think this is critical—not just for professional development, but for personal growth as well. Experiential learning provides fresh perspectives on how others approach challenges and how different industries operate. This can reveal new ways of thinking that might help you address issues in your own work and offer insights you might not have considered before.

At the core of everything, all human beings face the same challenges. In my work with WDHB, I’ve realised that issues like communication within organisations, limited resources, time management and competing priorities are universal. Just dealing with human beings can be tricky! When you think you’re alone in these struggles, it’s eye-opening to see that leadership groups across industries, including the space industry, face the same challenges. It’s part of being human—wanting to make things work and work well.

When someone from another industry observes how the space industry operates, they see a team trained to identify, process and address constraints as part of everyday life. This crossover can reveal new ways of doing things and create opportunities for innovation and “aha” moments. My goal is to help participants cultivate new ways so that they can turn insights into action once they leave.

It’s an interesting question because, in the space industry, most of us are just living our childhood dreams, working in a field we’ve been passionate about since we were kids! We’re known for doing a lot with limited resources, which forces us to be innovative—something we’ve always wanted to be. As we advance in our careers, moving from early roles to leadership positions, we tend to focus more on organisational culture and less on direct innovation.

However, at higher professional levels, you need innovation to reimagine processes that don’t work anymore, that don’t serve your community and that get in the way and make things challenging. This is going to help your organisation one way or another—whether you’re improving technology, processes, ROI, employee morale or something else entirely.

At the end of the day, I think people like to know they’re not alone in their challenges. There’s commonality there. In experiential learning, participants often realise that others share their struggles, and that there are many ways to solve problems. For example, when I worked on the ISS, someone asked, “What if we filled an empty space capsule with rodents?” because we send mice to the ISS and have challenges with how we get them up there. So why would we send up an empty capsule? 

That “what if” thinking is common in the space industry. We encourage asking questions, no matter how crazy they sound, because it can lead to innovative solutions. When we share our stories and our experiences with leaders, it helps them realise that no question is stupid, and that purposeful inquiry opens new pathways. 

Another experience I share with participants is when I was an aquanaut in NASA’s underwater mission, NEEMO [NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations]. I was living in an underwater habitat with NASA astronauts for 10 days as a space simulation and testing hardware for the ISS. Although everything worked during our preparation before our mission, not much functioned as expected at increased pressures in the underwater environment. This taught me the importance of understanding an end user’s experience—in this case, that end user was me and my team. So, that’s an experiential learning opportunity for me, right? 

Not everybody gets the chance to be in such an extreme environment and learn hard lessons in a quick way. But being in that situation made me a better engineer. I had to think about things differently—not just processes, but who else I needed to talk to, what it felt like to work those things through, and when it didn’t work, what that felt like, too.

It all comes down to the value of seeing how things are done in other organisations—what works, what doesn’t, and what new ideas can be applied. At NASA, our vision statement is more than just words—it’s a guiding principle. Unlike many organisations that make a vision statement and move on, we live by it. Diverse and unconventional collaborations are key—they provide opportunities to try new approaches, share knowledge, and transfer skills that might otherwise be lost. These collaborations lead to real experiential learning that sticks with you and ensures valuable lessons are shared widely.

These experiences are mind-opening and inspire both new thinking and action. Honestly, I think anyone who attends these programs will leave ready to turn their vision into real action. I want them to be inspired and to try something different. The programs WDHB puts on focus on pushing leaders to gain new experiences that make them feel more confident to turn thoughts into action. It’s an approach that pushes all of us out of our comfort zones, which is great for our brains and helps us adapt to big, scary challenges. It’s about growing and seeing the world differently. And that is valuable for anyone.