Reframing Priorities to Accelerate the Space Ecosystem w/ Val Munsami #48

Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the age of infinite. Throughout history, humans have made significant transformational changes, which in turn lead to the renaming of periods into ages. You've personally just lived through an experience called the information age, and what a ride it has been. Now consider that you may be right now living through a transitioning period into a new age, the age of infinite.

An age that is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but by a redefining lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and infinite resources, which we made possible through a new construct where the moon and the earth, as we call it Mearth, will create a new ecosystem and a new economic system that will transition us into the infinite future. The ingredients for an amazing sci fi story that will come to life in your lifetime.

The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hut Foundation, where we look to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, a moon hut, h u t, we were named by NASA, through the accelerated development of an earth and space based ecosystem, then to use the innovations, the paradigm shifting, and the endeavors to turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species.

Today, we're gonna be covering another great topic, reframing priorities to accelerate the space ecosystem. And today, we have us have with us Val Munsami. How are you doing, Val? I'm doing great, David, and quite looking forward to this conversation. So am I. Val has a great historical background in terms of what he's done. He's right now the CEO of the South African National Space Agency.

He has a PhD in physics from the University of Natal, a master's in business leadership from the University of South Africa. He's been to the International Space University, and he also has a certificate in international air space, and telecommunications law from the University of Pretoria. That's a lot, Val. You've done a you've been studying a lot at least. Okay. So let's one thing that has come up recently that I've now added to all the podcast is this.

Individuals have asked me, how do these podcasts operate, or do you know the information in advance. This is how a podcast works. It's a small but very valuable added piece. 1st, a guest is selected. Val was selected. 2nd, the guest watches 2 videos are on the project Moon Hut website in the top right hand corner, number 1 and 3. 3rd, we have a call. And during that call, I ask Val what would he teach me. And then we work to find what that topic is. I looked it up.

Val and I spoke for 2 hours and 28 minutes on our first call just to decide the title. And then last, what we do, not last, but 4th is they the individual then goes out. They work on their content. I don't hear about it. I don't see it. I don't have any knowledge of what they're going to be covering, and then they come back and we have the program. So right in front of me now, I have about 12 blank pieces of paper. And just like you, we're looking to learn from Val. So let's get started.

Val, do you have some bullet points for us that we're gonna be following? Yeah. No. Thanks, David. So so the topic as we'd agreed was reframing priorities to accelerate space ecosystems.

So in the running order of the narrative that I wanna put forward, I just wanted to give you a sense of my own personal journey because I think it's quite important to give you a sense as to how different elements of my own experience kind of come together in the end, which brings some, I think, some unique insights into the space ecosystem, which we don't know. So just so number 1 is personal journey. Yes. Okay. What's number 2? So number 2 is the the, you know okay.

Let me just put the title of it. Strategic planning essentially. Strategic. Okay. So a lot of us go through strategic planning, but I wanted to just contextualize that. Okay. Number 3. Is the ecosystems approach, And I wanna draw from ecosystems. These are natural systems. To care on nature. Now draw specific characteristics, which I think are very unique and important for organizations today. And then I wanna drill down specifically into what what I refer to as the space ecosystem.

And then that's the 4th element. And the 4th element is how do you transform the space ecosystems? So that's the the the 5th and last element in terms of the outcome. It's interesting while you're you said it in the beginning. When I type this title, I don't remember us saying space ecosystems, which was interesting. You added the s, and you added it again. So I'm I'm interested to hear how you've made that transition because it was space ecosystem when we first did it. So this is great.

So let's start. Number 1, let's start with number 1. What's your personal journey? Yeah. So I started off, you know, very narrowly focusing on on the science aspect. So, you know, I went through and got my PhD in physics, essentially. But I started off in solid state physics, but then migration to space physics later on. So that was my essential stepping stone into the career world.

But then as I started to get into the, the science aspects of it, I then moved on, and I sort of joined the department of trade and industry and looked at it from a regulatory perspective. So I was working in a section for the nonproliferation of the weapons of mass destruction. So you're talking about dual use technology. Yeah. Dual use technologies, how do you limit, you know, the access to dual use technologies, especially when there's security concerns around that.

And so I dealt with the the space elements and then also the nuclear, delivery systems and and so on. So how do we control all of it? So I worked in that sort of regulatory environment. And then I left, and I joined, an institution called the National Research Foundation. Before you get there, I I'd like to jump back for one second.

Sure. I and I I never thought about this until some of the work that we're doing inside of project Moon Hut is you just you were in physics, and then you focused on space physics. What does space physics mean? So there's there's different elements to space physics. So I specifically focused on what is called magnetospheric physics. So if I can give you a quick run through Yeah. Please. It looks like. Okay. So the sun is sort of a lack of nuclear furnace.

So it's converting hydrogen to helium, and there's a lot of energy that expelled. And so on a continuous basis, the sun is spewing out radiation and plasma. Okay. So radiation is the light that we see, but there's also sort of heat. And then the plasma is sort of ionized particles coming through from the sun. But the sun is also magnetized. It's got a magnetic field.

So when it's spewing out these, plasma, essentially, it's spewing out charged particles, but also magnetic field remnants coming out of the, the solar surface. Now on a quiet day, when nothing is happening on the surface of the sun, the plasma is actually streaming out of the sun radially outwards at 400 kilometers per second. That's the sort of average speed. Okay? That's 400 kilometers per second, which is quite energetic. Yeah. You're now and again, you get these okay.

First of all, there's a number of cycles. You get the 11 year cycle, the the sunspot cycle. So you have a number of, sunspots and and they go through, you know, highs and lows over 11 year cycle. Mhmm. But at the maximum, you get these, coronal mass ejections where you get this massive intensity of plasma spewed out. And they've come flying out, and that can go up to 800 to a 1000 kilometers per second. K?

Now an important aspect is all technology in Earth is affected by this solar wind or the solar storm that's coming out from the sun. Okay? And just to give you a sense of how that happens, the only thing that's protecting us is the Earth's magnetic field. So if you've done a bit of physics, you know, Maxwell's equation says Yes. Charged particles can't cross the magnetic field lines. They get trapped by the magnetic field lines.

So what actually happens is the these charged particles, they cannot get trapped in these radiation belts around the earth. You might have come across the radiation belts. And then if you think of it, it's like a tail. If you've ever held a sling shot in your hand, and if you pull the sling and you far enough and it snaps, that sling comes flying forward. And that's essentially what happens is you you're pulling the magnetic field lines on the night side.

So on the day side, it's sort of squashing the magnetic fields, a few lines. And then on night side, it's pulling into a long sling like, and then it suddenly it snaps. And all of that energy that's packed into that magnetic field comes flying with that magnetic field lines towards the earth. Where does that radiation go? It goes into the polar ionosphere. This is how you get the auroras, by the way. Okay. Yep. So the night sky gets lit up, so you have a greenish pinkish hue.

So when these charged particles come into the polar atmosphere, they hit the nitrogen and the oxygen atoms. So when they eat the nitrogen atoms, they kind of have a sort of a pinkish hue. Pinkish color sort of lights up. If it hits the oxygen atoms, you get the greenish sort of color. Now effectively what's happening is you're bumping up the electrons in these, oxygen nitrogen atoms to higher states. And when they come back to the ground state, they emit either light or energy.

And the light that you see is that characteristic of oxygen and nitrogen. That's how you see the auroras of it. So your study, you decided out of all of these places, and the reason I'm bringing it up in my head is to know where you're coming from when you're talking is you decided not to go into you and I have spoken about orbital mechanics. You decided to go into magnetospheric, physics, and that was because you thought it could what by knowing this?

Right. So, effectively, as I said, it affects all technology, but, specifically, from a space point of view, you cannot embark on a spacewalk or even launch a rocket during maximum, solar storm because you have excessive radiation, okay, up in the sort of upper atmospheres into the terrestrial solar, atmosphere as well. So you cannot do a manned space flight or a spacewalk outside of the, let's say, the International Space Station when these events are happening.

There's also, satellites that get damaged during these, solar events. So there's, you know, you lose 1,000,000,000 of dollars essentially because of damage to satellite. It's the biggest insurance in industry that's looking at this as well. So you ensure your satellites are getting specific damage. And by the way, on 10th December last year, we had one of our satellites reenter called SumandilaSat. And it was actually damaged 2 or 3 years after it was launched because of a solar stop.

So effectively, you got charged particles that are interacting with the electronics inside of the satellite, and you know what happens. Yeah. Just fries. Yeah. Okay. So Yeah. Getting back to so now I know you you you took this path, then you got involved with nonproliferation or doom. Yeah. Must have been a nice conversation at the dinner table. Yeah. Yeah. We're we're deciding how the world is gonna fall apart. Then the security and nuclear regulatory. What happened after that?

So after that, I joined what is called the National Research Foundation, and I was essentially responsible for international, agreements. So these are all the bilateral agreements signed by the Department of Science and Technology, with other countries at a intergovernmental level. Okay? And so there's quite a number of I think we are dealing about 30 different, international agreements. About 5 or 6 on African continent and the rest were abroad.

And then I dealt with, the International Council For Sciences. We had, like, about 35 or 36 different scientific areas. So we would have national committees, like, for food, you know, safety or brain, sciences or whatever the case may be, pharmaceuticals. So you'll have a committee on different scientific disciplines. And so we used to provide a structure function to bring those different, focus areas, in terms of how we could look at it strategically at the national level.

And then I also dealt with multilaterals like the nonaligned movement, and then there's also the atomic energy, you know, corporation internationally. So there was multilateral. There was Africa bilateral. So I dealt with the international relations, essentially. And after that, I then joined the Department of Science and Technology, and that's where I thought I think where my career really kicked off on the space side.

Because then I got really good insights in terms of developing strategies, policies at a for a space sort of ecosystem or let's call it the national space program, including setting up the South African National Space Agency at that time and looking at the different regulatory instruments and so on.

And then I kind of climbed up, and then I became the deputy director general for research development and innovation and started to look at intellectual property, setting up a institute for the National Intellectual Property Management Office, a technology innovation agency. I think in in the States, we call it the value of death. We call it the innovation chasm in South Africa. Trying to go from r and d into the commercial domain, and sometimes there's a gap that you have to bridge.

And then also including astronomy, like, the biggest radio, program at the moment is called the Square Kilometre Array. And so and then I come into sense. And the reason I'm painting this personal journey, when I come into an agency function at management high level management level, I've got to engage with scientists. I've gotta engage with the regulatory aspects of the business. I've gotta be clued up with the international context. I'm gonna be clued up with the policies, with the strategies.

So all of what I've learned on my journey sort of gets folded quite nicely into an executive level position is where I am now as the head of the agency. So that continuous learning different elements of what I've learned through the years actually gets packaged quite nicely. And I think because of that experience, I can look at ecosystems from very different perspectives. It's not a single track. I didn't stay on the scientific track, only.

So I've I can look at issues from international perspective, regulatory, and I think that kind of aspect is quite key in terms of how you unpack ecosystems. And, by the way, you gave me a copy of your book to read, paid to think. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. I I I when I was reading it, I said, well, okay. And I did mention to you that I'm actually writing a book called building sustainable space ecosystems. Yep. And I started to put quite a few points down.

And as I was reading your book, I was like, wow. You are essentially articulating the kind of things that I'm trying to articulate, but there's a there's a whole host of complementarity in terms of what you put down in your book and how I saw it. And and I thought, wow. This is amazing because now we're having the conversation today. I I I love it. And it it pay paid to think is a interconnectedness model of understanding of how we actually operate. So Absolutely.

What you're talking about when you use the term ecosystems, it's an interconnectedness that has to happen. And so I'm I'm glad that there's some similarities in there because it makes it a lot easier easier to have the conversation when you understand those principles. So great. Great. So so that's the the first, aspect of the outline is my personal journey.

Just to put that in context, then I can draw on those elements as we go I I love it, and I actually the the thing what surprised me, and I've let's not call it a surprise, but you you you look up somebody's history. And in my case, I had to look it up to do this short introduction, and we only have 1 or 2 lines. That's all we put in the introduction. I'm looking and saying, wow.

You know, even the law side, the the masters in business leadership and and the physics and all of those pieces show a a perspective a broader perspective than someone who just focuses on orbital mechanics or is a a specialist in the area. So I do love that you have that, complete crossover across all of that. So, yeah, good's great. Yeah. And just maybe one departure point, David. I mean, pay to think again. Right? So your ability to make decisions is based on your experience.

Mhmm. If your experience is limited, your ability to make decisions will also be limited. Yes. So when you look at a particular problem statement, you're gonna look at it from your personal experience. And but if you have a diverse set of experiences, then that's gonna, you know, really be good for you in terms of how you articulate and kind of look at that problem statement from different lenses, essentially. So very powerful aspect. Yeah. I think you're talking about the tool redefining.

That's it. Yes. Redefining is so unbelievably powerful. Yeah. And and you hit on 2 points. 1, the challenge statement is very important and how much time. That's actually what you and I were working on when we were creating the title is if you could see, there's now a similarity in there is what is the real challenge? What is the real challenge? We were kind of moving up that value chain.

But the other one that I love that you've brought up, which is fantastic because you you do get it, is that organizations will often bring in a person who says, okay. Let's let's address this topic, and then everybody go out and learn something, and then come back. And I said, no. No. It's already too late. You have to have people at the table who, while you're having these discussions, have that breadth, knowledge, scope, the vastness of whatever they're bringing to the table.

So when the challenge comes up, they say, oh, wait. Wait. Wait. Macadonia, 2015, we ran into that. No. No. No. We we we had that in the Congo, but it was in it was in agriculture, And we can cross pollinate that idea to this. But if you're waiting for people to grow to them, that becomes a challenge. It it becomes even more difficult. So picking your team, extremely important, and having that diversity that you have is is absolutely fantastic. Yeah. There is a podcast, by the way.

I don't know if you know I don't know if I shared this. If you look up Ought Mehta, which is in Dubai, I did a not a podcast, a TED Talk. And you could find it on ted.com, just David Goldsmith, or you can look up Aut, Autmeth, Meta, m e t h a, I think. You can look it up, and you can see there's a I TED talk on redefining. So that might be helpful to you also, Brau. Yeah. K. Great. And just maybe to ease into this second aspect is the strategic planning.

And I was reminded, many years ago when I was having a conversation when I was at the Department of Science and Technology with my director general. And we were talking about something, and I said to him, you know, there are 2 people that come to work at this organization. 1, people that are extremely passionate about what they do. There's a different element of cohort of people that come in just to collect a paycheck, essentially.

Mhmm. And you'll see this aspect sort of resonate inside of organizations as a collective. Now what I've painted is individuals and how they get to get, you know, into the organization. But when you look at organizations collectively, and it comes back pay to think. Executives, how do we look at the organization? There's two ways of how you actually approach, you know, in terms of the organizational challenge. 1, you either play not to lose.

So you can do the bare minimum that you have a clean audit. Your finances are, you know, right up there. You kind of take your strategy year on year. You just bump it up a little bit. You just keep it going, essentially. There's another element. I know it's I think many, there are probably fewer of these kinds of organizations where you're playing to win. There's a vast difference between playing not to lose Mhmm. And play to win.

Yes. And I think paid to think is essentially what differentiates executives who actually are paid to think and executives who are just there to warm a seat. I'm smiling here, and I'm gonna say this for a moment. For anybody who's listening, we don't have the video on. It's done intentionally so you don't see the person. You don't see these reactions. So that's why I'm saying Val can't see me. I'm doing notes. He's doing his thing. So let's get back.

So I'm smiling here because, yes, paid to think is about winning, and I even would say project Moon Hut is because we cannot lose. We have to win. That that's that's our entire that's our entire mantra. We see the 6 mega challenges coming. We see the challenges that we're facing in the future. We are not about science research and exploration. We are about creating the Mearth economic system and ecosystem, and we even the word space, we don't use the word we try to get away from that.

We try to use the word space. We because space is a geography. It is, space is not an industry. It's a geography. And so we're really talking about beyond earth. You just have to pick the geography in because we we are planning on winning. So, yes, I I like that analogy. It was very good that that not an analogy, the comparison between losing and winning.

Yeah. And I I sort of looked at you know, in your book, you talk about enterprise thinking and the 4 elements, strategizing, performing, forecasting, and learning, you know, at the enterprise level. And that's essentially what we are paid to do, essentially. So so when I looked at my experience in terms of and and by the way, I must, share this with you. When I joined the Department of Science and Technology, my supervisor was reporting to at the time.

One of my first job was to, sort of facilitate the development of a national space strategy. And I landed up in the first day, and the first directive was, can we maybe find a group of consultants who can come in and help us to write the strategy? And my first response was, it's like, why did you employ me for Yes. If this is my job, why do you want these companies to come in and and do this? I'm I'm not understanding. And the response was, okay. So you think you can do it?

It's it's worth a try. It's nothing worse than not trying. Well, there is something worse. If it means that that, like, the world's gonna fall apart because you didn't get the plan done on time, that would be worse. But you're saying, yeah. This is my job. You brought me into the design. Let me play with this toy, this this strategy. Let let me see what I could do. Yes. Exactly. And throw me in the deep end, and that's the only way I'm gonna learn to sew.

So I went to the, executive in the department at that time and was responsible for strategic planning for the organization. My first question to him was, is there a methodology that you use in terms of developing strategies? And he looked at me and he smiled, and he said, I'm sorry. There's none. Go and figure it out yourself. Oops. Okay. Harold. That's that was bad news for me. It's like, it's okay. This is not the end of the world. We can we're going to figure this out.

So I I think I mentioned to you, I started that position in the department, on the 1st July 2007. The strategy was completed by December 2007 in 6 months. Okay. Okay. And the That's good. Actually, I'm gonna comment. That's good. Yeah. Because no great very few great plans happen overnight or in a 2 day retreat. They take time to evolve. You have to you have to be sitting at dinner. You have to be talking to people and say, I screwed up a week or two later.

And most people who are creating plans where they say they did in the weekend, they thought about it for 7 years. Yeah. And that weekend is when it came out of them, but it wasn't created in that weekend. Yeah. And by the way, I didn't realize back then.

And as I kind of learn now and I, you know, look to, you know, courses around, like, design thinking, for example, where you engage your customer base to figure out, you know, there's minimal viable products and there's agile, you know, sort of planning and so on, you know, in terms of how you develop the minimal products and share with your customer and you build on that.

Back then so the the plan that I put together was saying, let's invite all of the government departments that are using, space products and services. Let's put them in the room and let's ask them the question, if we had to set up a space program, what is it that you want us to deliver on? So that was essentially taking a user requirements Yeah. Approach. K? So how can we make this agency relevant to you as the end user?

And I didn't realize it back then, but that was really where this thing really started to shoot properly. So I I've I've got a Yeah. Who did you invite? Because well, who did you invite first because I've got this huge smile on me. I gotta know what the how you did determine who uses beyond Earth. So how did you how did you how did you make this list? How was the wedding list put together? It was great because so what I did was I said, okay. The first thing, let's write a letter of invitation.

We knew the number of government departments. I think at that time, we had about 30 year old government departments. I think about 33. And, so we wrote a a letter from our director general to each and every other department or the director generals of each and every other department saying, this is our intention. We know that they we we knew at that point in time that many government departments have what is called GIS units, geographic information systems. Okay?

Where they're using geographic, or geospatial information for planning, for developing policies, and so on. So we invited from each of those departments a representative to come and sit and engage with us. So the director general in those departments had the leeway to choose who they want to be represented or or represent the department. So that's the approach I took. Well, I the okay.

So the reason I asked it, which is, I I wanted to hear what your answer was first, is right now we're using we're recording this on Zoom. So, therefore, Zoom is using technology beyond Earth. Then firefighters, the outfits that they wear, the shielding came from beyond earth. We have the the the glasses that I'm wearing. Just the glasses I'm wearing are beyond earth. The exercise equipment, baby food, freeze dried food, solar panels, cordless drills.

I I the list is endless, yet most individuals, including myself when I got involved in this, don't know that they all come from ideas generated from beyond Earth activity. Yeah. So my point was, how did you define? Because you could theoretically said, farmer, you need us. Dental offices, you need us. Firefighters, come on board. You could have picked anybody. Exactly. Absolutely. But the the it kind of came back to how we framed the problem statement.

Okay. Because it was Just because you're reading paid to think, I'm gonna call it a challenge statement. So the challenge statement. Yeah. Well, the the reason is, Val, and it's very simple. A Yeah. Problem is a is a very negative. An opportunity is very positive. And a challenge statement is new neutral. So if I walked up to you and said, I've got a problem. Oh, wow. But if I said to you, Val, I've got a challenge. Mentally, in that one second, you say, oh, let me see if I can help you.

A challenge is a neutral version of more of a pop a forward oriented thinking as compared to a problem. So you'll always hear me say, our team laughs at me, and they now do it too, is that, is because a a challenge just sets a different mindset. So I'm going to kind of push you in that direction since you're reading. Sorry. Yeah. So so let me tell you what the challenge back in the day was.

Yep. We knew that government departments had this GIS units that were using geospatial information to make decisions, essentially. Now here's the problem. A government department would go to an international satellite vendor or satellite operator and said, I say, I need image imagery or satellite imagery over this particular area because I need to make policy level decisions on this area.

Another government department would go to the same satellite operation and say, I need satellite images over this area. And very often, what you'd find is multiple government departments going to the same satellite operator asking for the same image over the same area. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. It's a geography. It's a geography. Yeah. And he said, hang on. There's something wrong because we are government. We are 1. We're not we might be 33 different divisions, but we are 1.

So why should we be paying multiple times? And this is essentially when we set up the agency, how we pay for a multi use a single license, multi user, a single yeah. It's Yeah. It's a single license with multi multi user. Yes. Yeah. So we buy the image once, and it gets used across government. The cost saving along those lines alone was significant. Oh, do you have any number?

Because it would be unbelievably significant based on a a budget where 33 buyers are buying the same thing, and then one buys it and says, can we can we repurpose it? So do you know what type of savings you were able to generate? It's massive. I can't give you that off my head because it's it's it changes from year to year. But give me give me a sense. Was that, and you could do it in rand if you want, if you could do whatever currency you'd like.

But what's the what might you be spending before, and what might what did it switch from? So Yeah. Because it I think scale is important. Yeah. So A wild guess. It it could be reduced the cost by a factor of anywhere between 10 30 Okay. At a national level. Okay. And and that's huge. That's huge if you multiply it across multiple different service offerings. And if you are spending and I'm gonna convert it to US dollar.

If you're spending a 1,000,000 US dollars and now you're spending a 100,000, but you've done that 8 times Yeah. So you've got 8,000,000 to 800,000 or whatever those numbers, it could be larger because of the 30. That ends up being real money. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. And by the way, I should also maybe, just indicate, and you can look this up. Landsat, the US Landsat Yep. When it was first launched. So, NASA and NOAA were involved in that particular mission.

Define define Landsat for a moment. So It it's one of the first, remote sensing satellites that we're now into space. Yep. Okay. So initially, it was paid for by government, and then the end users used to pay to access that information or, let's say, satellite imagery coming out of that satellite. But what actually happened eventually, Chris said, hang on. The challenge we have is is that limited uptake. But we're having a problem because governors already pay for this.

So why should another government department be pay didn't pay for this as well? You're paying twice. So let's make this freely available. Okay? Because government has paid for it. Yeah. You already have it. It's your it's your image, your file, your data. Absolutely. And you can go look at the stats. There was an exponential uptake of the satellite imagery across the government departments just by taking that one policy decision. I I love how you just reframe that.

And why I'm why I'm saying I love the way you reframed it is you didn't look at it as an operational decision. Yeah. You looked at it, and I think you've read it in the book, the the GPP. That's it. Yeah. You took that and said this is systems and structure. This is policy. This is operational standards. You didn't say it was just it was just well, we we negotiated a new deal. You saw it as a means by which the organization can be restructured using policy, which is brilliant.

And it comes back to the ecosystem because you're making a policy decision for an ecosystem. Yep. Yep. So I've seen a lot of these kind of nuances playing out, in different, aspects in this landscape, which I call the space ecosystem, which is what I wanted to share today. I mean, even right now where I am sitting, you know, the very first thing that I had to do was to relook at the strategy because that's like the rudder in your ship. You know, it gives you direction.

Mhmm. It allows you to steer in specific direction. So without it, you're just aimlessly just floating in the ocean. So the strategy is your departure point for the organization. And I don't think a lot of organization actually play pay, due attention to strategy. And I'll come back to why I say that. And I've I'd like to hear that because I, I would I'm gonna probably frame it differently, but let me hear I'd love to hear how you frame it. Yeah. So there's different aspects around strategy.

And I think I started off playing to win versus playing not to lose. If you're playing to win, strategy is key. Okay? And every other aspect of the organization hinges off your strategy, by the way. Whether it's your systems, your processes, your structure, It all comes to fruition because of the kind of strategy you put on the table and the strategy that you want to pursue. And if you think, of your organization as in a boat race. Let's assume you're in a sailboat race.

And there's different scenarios you could look at. Okay. So, for example, right now in co during COVID 19, we had a lot of organizations shut down. So what happens if you're in a sailboat race and the wind dies? What do organizations do? Most organizations just stop and say, there's nothing else we can do. Just wait for the wind to pick up and then we carry on. But there's some organizations that say, hang on. Let's get this boat ready.

That when that wind picks up, our boat is in ship ship shape condition. We have taken all the mask out of the bottom of the boat. Everything is well greased and oiled, and we're ready to go. And it's those organizations that plan during that particular phase when nothing is happening, when it seems like nothing is happening, plan for when the wind picks up actually are the winners.

And by the way, if you think of strategies that are put together at a national level when you're in a recession, you will notice that even in South Africa right now, our president is pushing quite hard for investments in infrastructure. Mhmm. Because that's what countries do. They invest in infrastructure so that when the wind picks up, when there's an upturn in the economy, your economy is ready to go. Those are the strategies you use when it seems like the wind has died down.

And it's you're perfectly in my opinion, this is just my opinion. You and I are talking. In my opinion, you're perfectly correct. I would add, And I think it's written about, but it's I will add that the majority of plants that I see when I'm out, worked in over 50 countries, all over the world, lived in Hong Kong, lived in Luxembourg, lived in the US, They're not really plans. Yeah. They are not they don't take the desired outcome.

They don't hit on the the strategy, the macro tactics, the tactics, all terminology that value would understand at this point. I'm not gonna go into all the details, but they're really not a plan. I'll give you an example, and I won't name the country because I'm trying to talk with them right now. But the head of digitalization of a major country in Europe asked a company to create a plan.

Yeah. And they came back with a 170 pages of a plan that it was almost as if you they did every single thing that needed to happen in the entire world, and it was not a plan that anybody could follow. There were no there were no tactics that you could take a hold of. So most plans that I read are not truly plans. And the second part that I love is exactly what you and I were talking about just before we made the call is we are setting up infrastructure.

It's this need to put in place the systems and structure of the GPP. And I apologize. I'm gonna say it here because someone might ask later, what does that mean? It means the Goldsmith productivity principle. I didn't name it. Somebody else named it. There's a there's a TED talk in Luxembourg. You could watch where that name came up. But the the systems and structure need to be put in place. And before you and I started, do you remember what I said we put in place?

Yeah. JPMorgan took us on as a private banking client. And in doing so, we have set up we're setting up infrastructure. And even so, when the guy when he sent I said, what's our ACH number? What's our wire number? And he sent them over, and I said, no. No. No. No. We need more. And he said, what do you mean? I said, I want the ability to get for us every currency in the world. Yeah. And he said, what what do you mean?

I said, well, let's say we're talking to a wealthy individual that wants to get involved with Project Moon Hut, the foundation of the corporations we're building, and they happen to be sitting in Europe. They don't want to use their euros or their dollars because JP accepts the dollars. We want them to be able to send, Swiss francs Yeah. And not have to do an FX, a conversion of the cost of FX back again when we wanna buy something in Europe.

Yeah. And so what he did, first time he's ever done this, is he went through and grabbed every single code for us for every currency in the world. And now when someone will ask us for later, they'll ask us, how can we send it? We'll send our ACH or wire information, but behind it will be every single currency that we can accept. Right. And that could not be done when you're busy busier. So you're perfectly I mean, what you just said, spot on. I love what you're saying here.

And then I wanna give you 2 other scenarios, by the way. Sure. The the one is, I think it's a common mistake that we make is that when we're putting together strategies for, let's say, an organization in this case, we kind of look at the environment and we say, okay. Who's the leader in this environment? And very often, we try to emulate the leader. It it can come down to a me too strategy Mhmm. Following, essentially.

But if you think about it, David, if you're, again, in the boat race, right, if you are second to the leader, you're both racing under the same wind conditions. And if your boats are equally matched and if you are, racing, there's no way you're gonna overtake this leader if you're having the same strategy. That's a brilliant analogy or example. That's brilliant. Yeah. It makes perfect sense. And because you're you're gonna be following exactly what they're doing.

However, you're axe you're actually gonna be in a different wind condition potentially. So you could be following what they're doing, but they're for their condition, and you are not for your condition. So even that's wrong. That's that's a great example. Yeah. And so, by the way, the only way to beat the front runner is to take a different strategy. Yep. In the hope that you actually get ahead. Because if you take the same strategy, you're gonna just be level.

Okay. You're you're a 100% right, at least my opinion. Sorry. I'm not the I'm not the end all of all answers, but I agree with you. Yeah. But but, also, if you are the front runner, it pays to look behind you to see what the other guys are doing. That's stay. Yeah. Yeah. That's competitive intelligence. Yeah. Exactly. And by the way Have you gotten to that chapter yet? Yes. I'm I'm I'm really, I let, like I said, quite amazed at what you put down in terms of how you think because yeah.

I'm not sure if you're a Formula 1 fan, but this is exactly the strategy they use in terms of tire management. So you could use different compounds of tire. You got a soft compound, a medium, and a half. Right? The guy who's running second will not emulate let's say the guy who's in the front, and if he stops and changes his tire, the guy who's running second is not gonna use the same tire. He will choose a different compound.

And, likewise, the guy who's leading the race, if the guy was second who changes his tire, he's gonna match him so he can stay ahead. Yeah. So this strategy is quite powerful. But, again, like I said, I know this Are you a you're obviously a fan of racing. Yeah. Is there an individual who's responsible with binoculars or something, is there a person responsible to try to figure out what tire that other company that other, group is using? Oh, yes. Absolutely.

There's a competitive intelligence component of it, which somebody is watching multiple different pits to figure out which each one is doing, and then he's feeding back or she is feeding back the person. Sorry. The person is feeding back the data so that that pit crew can make its ultimate final decision. Yes. By the way, there's a whole big data, team behind each and every of these teams.

So if you're watching Formula 1, you will see Amazon Web Services providing analytics to say, this guy is gonna catch up with that guy in in lap 21 or lap 10. And then, you know, each and every moving part of the the car is there's actually data attached to it, which they then stream back, and there's all sorts of decisions being made. And even the strategy can either win you the race or or you lose the race based on the stretch.

All I can say is my my first time on a racetrack with friends, I was in the center because they had a car, and I was standing there and I saw this pit car. The what is it? The, not the pace car, but the the starting car. What's the first car that goes around that that starts the race? Well, in Formula 1, there's no No. But in in Formula 1, there's not. But in another race, what happened was this car drives up, and I can tell this is the guy who starts the race.

So I went out when the the, there was a person in the car with him, she got out. I walked over, and I started to talk to him over the hood of the car. And he at one point, he says, oh my god. Oh, we've gotta go. You wanna go? Hop in. So my first day, first time ever at the races when I was a kid, I was in the pace car. That's the name. I was in the pace car. My my first people said I've been coming here for 30 years. I've never been in a car, and you've been in a pace car.

So, yes. I I I didn't realize sorry. There was a a on the side is I didn't realize how I never thought about it. That's another thing. I've never thought about how much data analytics goes into the actual on race day decision making. Yeah. It it's amazing. And then, you know, there's there's a book called The Blue Ocean Strategy. I'm sure you must have read about it. But, normally, when organizations look at the environment, they look at it what in what is called the the red ocean.

So it's effectively trying to boil the red ocean. So you're doing similar things to other organizations, whereas the blue ocean says take a completely different approach, and I think your book talks about it. Yes. Relook at it. Redefine it. Look at it from different angles, and be different in a way. And I think that's what strategy is all about, and there's an art, and it's a process itself. So so I don't know if you planned on hitting it. What I'd love to hear and can we transfer back in time?

Don't give me today's observation of it. What was, not just the over to the top level, but what was the, a little bit more of the details of what this new plan you were creating that took you 6 months. That plan, not today's version of that plan. What was that what did that plan say? You know what I'm asking? In terms of how those actually framed in the end? Well, yeah, you said you took you 6 months to come up with. I think it was 6 months. I didn't add the months, but you said by December.

You had a plan. So my question is, what did you do in that plan that was so new and so creative or so innovative or did something differently? What was in that? Uh-uh. As I said, we took what is called a user requirements approach. So we took So that that's that's top. Yeah. What did you do inside of that is my question. So so, effectively, what I did was to take those inputs, and I collated them. Okay? And then I said, hang on.

Let's see if we can cluster these guys, these responses, essentially. And when we started to do that, there were 3 clusters that came out. Okay. The one was saying that we need to look at, you know, these PACE products and and services, essentially, looking at it from an environmental resources management perspective. So we manage need to manage our resources, our oceans, our forestry, you know, the water resources. Can we look at our weather planning and so?

So there's a whole string of different user requirements under environmental resources management. The second was saying there's disasters. So let's look at disaster safety and security. And if you go and look under that, you know, cross border risk, moving of assets across the the the country, you know, making sure that the assets are secured, looking at waterborne diseases as an example from a health perspective.

Yeah. So there's a whole plethora of different elements, positioning and timing for, say, as a safety point of view, as an example. Then the third one was innovation and economic growth. Looking at it from an industry perspective, the spinouts, spin ins. You you talked about all the different, innovations that came from the space ecosystem, essentially. So we wanted to emulate that aspect of the innovation, value chain. So so that was the 3 clustering, essentially.

And then we said if that is our that the agency has to respond, how do we set up the agency to actually respond to that? And I think this is where the ecosystem my initial thinking of the ecosystem sort of stemmed up. And I think I'm gonna come back to that a little later on because if you read our national space strategy. When I talk about space ecosystem, you will see that reflected in that particular strategy. Okay. But I think over the year, we've got nuanced and strengthened in a way.

I I appreciate it. You you know what I'm asking, and I think you know me well enough after 2 and hour and a half hours is that I'm I'm I like to dig down because often the missing my my wife was the person who did this for me, and I'll share this just as an an aside. As I used to say to say, well, I give a definition of something, and then you give an example of it. So I would say, well, a cup is something you could drink water out of. And my wife one day sat me down and said, no. No.

No. No. No. A cup is a certain type of material that's shaped into a form that can hold a liquid. It can come in all different types of mediums. An example of using a cup is so you could drink out of it. And so what often happens when there's an a description of something, you get the example, but not really the definition of it.

And what you're really trying to accomplish in this this little set here by breaking it down into the clusters or this the product lines is another layer of me understanding how you were approaching it. And you approached it. The first one you brought up was environmental. Yep. And then the second one was disaster safety and security. 3rd was innovation economic growth.

So it was interesting because I think if we were to talk to individuals in the, beyond Earth ecosystem, they will then they will start off with innovations and economic growth. That's right. Yes. They they start with not the first one that really is being the use case. For example Yeah. The firefighter, the glasses, the exercise equipment, the baby food, those that I used earlier, this freeze dried food. They would start off with the other one and thinking, that's not why you do this.

Yeah. And so it was interesting the order that you even gave it. So I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was primarily because of what government was doing, in the day with regards to that, and that was our departure point, essentially. But the last element that we put in innovation and economic growth was exactly to the point you're making, not to miss it. Yeah. No. It's and I can hear it. That's what I'm listening to your words and the the process in which you're delivering them.

And in doing excuse me. And in doing so, you can you can get an understanding of how you have approached challenges. And I've gotta say so far, I'm I'm completely impressed with your approach to the things that we've already discussed. I'm I'm sitting here saying, okay. How could this be reused, amplified, redefined for project Moon Hut? Our Yeah. And our directive is to improve how we live on earth for all species. So how do we amplify the Mearth ecosystem?

How do we how do we redefine terminology or to get the right individuals engaged in our project? So these were these are so far brilliant, observations. So thank you. Yeah. Great. So when we're talking, when we look at institutional level, we talk about strategic, developing the strategy, but we talk about strategic planning. So the one is the strategy formulation, but the other one is the the actual implementation of that.

So the strategic planning or the strategy aspect is, you know, how do we look at this new terminology, not problem statement, but the challenge? And then look at it from how do we wanna see ourselves in the next maybe 5 or 10 years? And what are the key goals and objectives that we wanna put down for this particular organization? And that's the strategic aspect. But the planning aspect is how do you look at it from an analytical process point of view and translate that strategy into action?

And I think in your book, you talk about not project management, but management of projects. You you looked at 2 limiting you to 2 projects per person. Let me explain. The reason that we the term project management always comes up, but that's an activity within. When you're leading, when you're in the role of overseeing, you have a different challenge. It's which projects to work on, and that's managing projects.

So you might have 40 projects going on within your organization, which are priorities, which are not, which could be eliminated, which don't. In each one of them, there's project management. How do we make this project work? So, yes, that's the distinction there. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Project management is a philosophy, which I think you would yep. Mhmm. From a process point of view.

And what I would like is when I look at strategic planning, you develop your strategy and then you start planning into the organization. And, effectively, what you're doing is you're cascading your goals and your objectives at a strategy level into the performance contracting to back into the organization. And I quite like the filtering that you said. That's limited at an individual level to not more than 2 projects per person.

And you give different scenarios, you know, fully capacitated and shared and and also outsourced as well. But those those different sort of options that you have in terms of how you bring all of this together, inside the organization. And I've seen this now starting to work in where I am exactly right now because Perfect. Great. You directly in terms of business remodeling, looking at the policies and processes, looking at our systems.

I'm gonna come back to the Goldberg, productivity principle, which is what I quite like. And by the way, if you want to with your team that you're doing this work, if you wanna share what I sent you Yeah. Yes. Definitely. Do. Please do. This is, there there's the the age of infinite is about infinite possibilities and infinite resources. It it's not to make a a few rand on a book. So Yeah. Please share it with your team because then you can have a similar conversation across the ecosystem.

Right. Yeah. Okay. So just so you know, I'm I'm giving you permission right now. Share it with your team. Let them know they can use it. Let them know because it'll help you not to have to articulate the same message. You're starting from the same point of reference. Great. No. Thanks for that, David. I certainly will do that. So we're talking about strategic planning. You said sorry. You said look at policy. Yeah. Sorry. What did I You said let's look at policy.

Yes. Policy. Now I'm gonna come back to that aspect, because I'm gonna look at the ecosystem. So let's look at the strategic planning and why we actually do strategic planning. You know, the you either want to reinvent the organization through continuous improvement. So you gotta see the organization moving forward on a continual basis. So Mhmm. That's not quite strategic planning. It's just incremental improvement. Mhmm. But you also want to address maybe a specific challenge as you put it.

Not a problem, but a challenge. Okay? Then you also do what is called mission driven need or an agenda addressing a specific mission. And project Moon Hut is exactly that. It's a specific mission that you want to engage in, and you put a strategic plan in terms of how that is gonna come to fruition. And then you can also manage strategic change. You know, we're living in a fast rapid paced, environment. Technology is changing over the hour, essentially.

How do we keep track, and how do we make sure that we're right up there in the cutting edge of that particular change aspect? So you can use strategic planning for very different, aspects of the challenges in the organization, including increasing revenue and all of the things that we look for in terms of the boss bottom line. But, effectively, what we have to do is ask the tough question.

And I think one of the things that I quite like is, this issue around why why we exist, the purpose of the organization. And, you know, you have to challenge the status quo. It's not just accepting what you if you come in as as an executive into an organization, you just don't walk in, sit down, and carry on as business as usual. You gotta challenge the status quo.

Because very often, you'd find out that the organization is the way it is because, you know, executives have been sort of moving in a particular, let's say, footpath, it's very difficult for them to get off track and look at things very differently. So your job as as an executive when you're paid to think is to challenge the status quo. So you have to reflect and respond to the environment within which we operate, but also looking at it, as I said, how do you beat the competition?

Not by following, but by looking at different strategic options. And this is where now when you bring that strategic planning aspect is you develop that road map in terms of, how you move forward. And what I figured out over the years and as I said, one of the when I was given this task and I asked the executive responsible for strategy and planning, what is the process?

I started to look at this, and your book actually articulates and frames it exactly how I've learned this whole art of strategy development. It's it's it's a process, essentially. You know, you looked at your current reality, and there's very different tools that you want to could use in terms of your current reality. But you also wanna look into the future, that shared vision. Now when you're looking at the current reality, obviously, you can do a SWOT analysis or this PESTLE analysis.

But, essentially, what you're doing is you're taking stock of the present, the you know, where you are at the moment. And you can do all sorts of audit, you know, studies and surveys. You can do, you know, referencing and research and so on. But when you're looking at the, you know, the the future is you're looking at that shared vision, but you define the values, the benefits, the the value proposition at the the endpoint is that here's my vision.

When I get to that, achieving that vision, this is what it would look like. And in between, you're doing a gap analysis, essentially. You're defining identifying the critical issues between where you are at the moment and where you need to be. And that's when you develop your goals and your plans. That's your strategic aspect. That's the element, the process that takes you from where you are to where you need to be.

And that the detailed implementation plan actually kicks off, as an offshoot of that exercise. And I kinda figured this out, you know, just by trial and error. I didn't you know, you can do an MBA. It's not clearly defined in terms of processes and tools. You can do a SWOT analysis and so on, but how this whole thing fits together, it's actually an art, that that kind of feeds into, the process.

What I want to do is maybe right now, in terms of that processing, and then just to recap very quickly, you know, in terms of the strategy, and I gave you the example of the national space strategy, looked at it from a user needs perspective, understanding what sort of services those particular needs, you know, users would require. And that helps you to define the market.

And then when you're setting up, like, your agency or your institution, you look at it from a governance and management perspective. And then you have to look at the coordination aspect. How do you bring all of these different elements together? And this is where the ecosystem now starts creeping. And you can even look at international corporation in that perspective because, you know, if you're looking at the space ecosystem, it's not just limited to a national level. It's a global value chain.

And this is where international corporation, space 4.0 ex is an example. 3.04.0 talks about international corporation and industry. Can you can you please was I first time I've heard space 3.0. First time I've heard 4.0. Can you define what they are? So if you go back into the history of, space, okay, it went through different successive phases, essentially. So we talk about space 0 version 0. This is astronomy, by the way. Pure astronomy. Okay. Okay. And then I love that you went that far back.

I was not anticipating. So, like, where does he talk about it? He says, okay. We we've gone back, back, back. Right back to the original. I I I Nanaaran Prasad, when I asked him a question on the podcast, it was a brilliant answer. He says, well, let's start with gunpowder. It's like, what?

And he took all it took the it took me all the way back to China and the development of gunpowder and how rockets were sent from ship to shore with mail on them so that the they wouldn't have to take a boat and have to moor and then boat in and give the mail and go back. So the rocketry improved from ship to shore using gunpowder, and and and it was brilliant. So I I love that you started with astronomy. That's the first thing I thought about, and I'm assuming you've at least heard of Nan Iran.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we start with astronomy. Go ahead. Yeah. And then the space 1.0, and I think you know about the space race trying to get to low earth orbit, essentially. So and and satellites into low earth orbit. But then you go to space 2.0, that's when you see the space exploration coming in, you know, the, planetary missions coming in. So that's the that's the version 2.0.

Okay. Version 3.0 is when we see, you know, the MERS space station, and then you have the International Space Station. Now you're seeing international collaboration coming in. K? That's version 3. And it's still there. It hasn't moved up. But what you see more of right now is version 4.0, which is industry. So even NASA, for example, is outsourcing to the industry, and we're seeing many space agency doing that, opening up.

And the ecosystem is now open up for the industry to be more integrated into the ecosystem. So we're now into version 4.6. It's interesting that you didn't mention when you went over these, especially at 3 point o and even in the 4 point o. I've, the the context of the outcomes from the industry these players in each one, because I'm reading websites today of major players, and they will say in there, we are about the safety and security of the United States.

Yeah. We are about the this this this of our country. Yeah. And it, to me, is the antithesis of what we are about. I mean, we we are about bringing the world together in one entire project that will help move everything forward so we could find commonality and not the divisiveness we're finding even today through a variety of other experiences we're all, involved in. And where in this whole the industry outsourcing do we find that people actually really care about making everybody better?

Like, this age of infinite we talk about, is is that 5 point o? I you know? So, David, it as you're talking, it struck me, by the way. I've been following you you might know there's the James Webb Telescope that's been launched. Right? Yeah. Okay. So it was a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, ESA.

Now if you follow the public announcements that are being made, it's quite funny because what I see is that NASA has done a, b, and c. And on the other side, it's ESA has done c, d, e, and f. NASA has done g, h, and I. ESA has done I don't see a joint Exactly. NASA has done this and this. I I see the sort of competitive spirit between NASA and ESA.

And yet if you were to really think about this whole beyond Earth ecosystem, and the reason for it is in our minds, the way we play it is we are about bringing the participation across all ecosystems. And we we do not say we are working with x and y because of their country affiliation or their references to a specific type of organization such as the European Space Agency.

We are about individuals and organizations helping us to achieve the desired outcome of improving life on earth for all species. And that's really why you and I started talking is that I saw, at least for the interview, because there have been people who get turned down for interviews, that you had a more holistic view. Yours, I think you recall, and I'm not trying to pick on you, you were very much Africa, and I said know the world. Yeah. And that's because that's what we're about is the world.

So I I I agree with you. I see it's not a collaboration. It's you do one thing, I do another. You do one thing, I do another. Yeah. But yet the mission success of the mission was because of both the contributions. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. So where does where does we improve the rest of the universe or at least our, the the world? Is that 5 point o? Yeah. Is that in your mind, if you were to to to say, David, we're in 4, 5 is really where we come together.

Yeah. Okay. Because I'm gonna use that now just so you know, but we're gonna we're gonna not gonna call it space 4 point o. We're gonna call it beyond Earth 4 point o, and it's gonna be 5.0. So 5 point o is Mearth. Yes. We sent it here. I wanna draw a small caution, David. Sure. I'm I'm I'm playing with you a little bit, but I'm I'm trying to play this out in my head. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I very often heard, with all the geopolitics that's happening around the world.

Yep. You look at the bilateral level, country x is not working well with country y and all sorts of concerns. And then you have statements as but look how things are working out in space. You know? Yes. There's many countries working on this particular initiative, and and this is a good model because, you know, when we get to Mars, we're gonna crack those kind of problems or tensions that we have at a geopolitical level. It's not gonna exist in Mars.

That's why I I hope you're laughing very hard when you say that. Yeah. I I don't know. The the challenges that you have on Earth has to be tackled, dear enough. So so the way maybe this is might be useful for you to understand a little bit about what when when people hear about project MoonUp, one of the questions sometimes comes up is, are you going to, are you going to, have peace on earth for all mankind? Yeah. And I say to them, no. It's not on our agenda. And they look at me kinda strange.

And they say to them, look. You put 2 heterosexual men, a heterosexual woman on an island, deserted island. Are you gonna have peace? And people will laugh. And just the other day, someone said, well, 2 heterosexual women on an island would not have peace. And you look at marriages, which are just 2 people we don't have peace. Yeah. So that's not our initiative. However, I'd like you to do an extrapolation from here to the future. Yeah. Let's take our 6 mega challenges.

Climate change, I'm not gonna go into the details. You and I have gone over a little bit. Climate change, mass extinction, ecosystem collapse, which is full ecosystems completely falling apart. We've already had them on Earth. Then there's displacement, political, economic, religious, you name it. Then there is unrest. Again, political, economic, religious, you could name the list. There's a long list of them.

And the last one is explosive impact, things such as overfishing, the coral reefs dying, the rainforest disappearing, all of those. My take, this is our plan because we have a 45 year plan, is that in about 7 to 10 years, and this is inclusive of the the doomsday cliff. I forgot what it's called. The cliff down in South and, Antarctica.

When these pressures start to put conflict on the world, individuals will start start to ask new questions, and then they're going to say, who out there is solving this? And we hope, that's our plan, to be ready to say, globally work with us. Yeah. That's that's our that's there this has already been thought through, but that doomsday cliff, what is it called? The doomsday glacier. When that drops, it won't raise the sea level because it's really the glacier behind it that does a lot of that.

Yeah. But once you start seeing Indonesia, Philippines, the Maldives, you see the coastal waters of China, the the greater bay happens to be when you and I grew up, it was the Pearl River Delta in China. Right. You look at the e the coast of the United States, you can go down through Europe and look at Scandinavia. These water just water alone will cause individuals to say, what's the new solution out there?

And we're hoping Yeah. That's our plan to be ready for that, to address these type of challenges. I don't think humanity is ready today to get over the geopolitics. I think there's just so much there's so many challenges there. I'm gonna keep my mouth closed. I I was gonna bring this aspect a little later on. Okay. Okay. Sorry. No. No. But I think it'll be useful just to put it on the table. I've picked this up even inside the organization I'm at the moment at that sense of the space agency.

One of the things that I picked up is we talk about missions. So we have what is called a mission driven focus. So we have a satellite that's gonna be launched or we're gonna put a new ground station. So these are specific missions. Okay? So the organization is mission driven. So we have these good big mega projects that we're looking at. And then we have values led. So the values that we articulate for the organization is there to ensure that we achieve those missions as a collective. K?

So it's mission driven, values led. And then I said, hang on. This needs to be turned on its head, actually. Mhmm. It actually should be values driven, mission led. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think if you take that approach, you're gonna start to crack a lot of I'm not saying all, a lot of these global issues. Even if the NASA is a example that I gave you, it's mission driven. The values come second. Right?

But if you put the values in front and you said and NASA and ESA sat down and said, what are our values that we collectively agree as NASA and ESA, and how do we communicate around that? What you're seeing right now and how the communicating would be completely different. Absolutely. Which which is mind boggling if you think about it for a moment. Yeah. It's there are stories out there about how by sending a satellite, we're gonna improve these 6 mega challenges over time.

No. Yeah. Our directive is to improve life on earth for all species. That's it. One of the mechanisms we are using is Mearth. 1 of and beyond earth. One of the tools we're using is on earth tech transfer. One of the tools on earth we are using, and there's a series of them. That's part of the plan. But it's not you don't hear this, and they, you know I'm not a space person. Yes. Exactly. So I don't I I'm kind of baffled at how this is kind of, in my mind, glossed over.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do this. We're gonna set up the telescope. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do this, and it will help Earth. Yeah. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Rewind that for a moment. So Yeah. You're absolutely right. So how do you fix that in your mind? Well, this is how you reframe now the the organizational culture, essentially. You know, what is central to the values of the organization? And then the mission gets added on to that, essentially.

And so, by the way, if you look at it from what's happening globally, when investors are looking into organizations, you know, you you you probably come across the ESG, the economic, social, and the governance aspect. Yeah. Okay. It's values driven. You you're stepping into muddy water with me on this one, but go ahead.

Let me hear what you've Because if you take a values driven approach, it's it's not only looking at it from the internal to the organization only, but what is the external value that you're creating? You talk about project moon art. You know, how do we improve the life on earth as an example. It's values driven. Okay? Project moon art is secondary to the fact of what you're trying to achieve. It's improving the quality of life.

So Mhmm. So when we look at how do we take care of the environment, how do we look at the social impact that we're making, it's values driven. Even when you're looking at your customer focus, it's values driven. The customer doesn't care of the particular mission. It doesn't care how you got the data. It doesn't care how you what ground segment you have. All they want is that data on their laptop or their handheld cell phone, the mobile app, or what have you. That's all they care about.

And if you as an organization can look at it from the value stream perspective, how do you do that ethically and morally? I think it's complete because many organizations focus on the mission rather than saying let's focus on the downstream, the customers. So And the governance aspect. There's one video you watched. We called it the moon hop mission. It was that word mission, I hate. Sorry. It was because somebody on the team kept on using the word mission, and I put it in there.

But we actually call it the Muna Project because it is a project. It's just one piece of everything we're working on. And Yep. The the question that I have then is how do you not just writing it on a piece of paper and telling people that's supposed to be the the value that we, that we defend and we work towards. How have you done it, or how would you suggest organizations do it when it comes to the beyond Earth ecosystem? Okay. So when you You know what I'm asking. Right?

Yeah. No. I I know exactly what you're asking. Alright. So, there's a structured approach, and you you talked about the the, you know, the strategy, and then you're kind of looking at it from the, you know, the performing aspects, the forecasting, the learning aspects. So in my framing, I looked at it from a strategy point of view, then you gotta look at your business model and structure. Then you look at your processes, your systems, and then rewards and recognition for yourself.

But an aspect that's truly in cup encompassing all of that is the culture of the organization. Now what we try to do, we actually started this exercise about 8 months ago. We're going through what is called a change management process in terms of relooking at the culture of the organization. And, by the way, if you wanna change the culture of the organization, the trick to doing it is by taking each and every individual on that change management journey.

Mhmm. Each and every so if you wanna change the organization, you gotta change the behavior of each and every individual. And, by the way, I should also mention, you could have the most fantastic goals on earth, and you can try to implement it. But, ultimately, the success of that strategy is based on the collective behavior of your organization. And that comes to each and every individual playing their part in the organization.

So when we look to change management, we use the particular model called ADCA. I'm not sure if you're aware of it. But first of all, you've gotta create the awareness for change. So you articulate the strategy essentially, and then you say to the organization, to get onto this bandwagon, on this strategy, this new direction, this organization cannot it cannot be business as usual. K? Because if we do, we're gonna fall off the bandwagon. So you cannot maintain the status quo.

You cannot do more of the same. You cannot just resolve your current issues and think that things will be different. So you're gonna start to relook at the organization. And so the first one is to create the awareness. You've got a new strategy. You make them aware that there's a need to change. The second element in the is called the desire. We need the each and every individual to ensure that they have a desire to change. If there's no desire to change, nobody's gonna change.

And there's processes, by the way. There's a the the ADCOM model is a is a is a process driven approach. Each and every individual has to be engaged in this process. So you create the desire, the case for knowledge. So now you give each and every individual the tools in terms of how do I change? What do I need to do to change? And there's a whole suite of tools that we you know, neuroleadership, positive thinking, reinforcing, and those kind of positive thinking.

It's it's quite interesting, in terms of how your thought patterns could influence. I mean, we just did a neural leadership. Actually, I think it was in November. And just by the way, I need to give you this example. There's a set of twins. I think this is the case in the US. The the father happens to be a mass murderer, unfortunately. So he's on death row. A few years down the line, they go and look at these 2 the set of twins. So the one is also turned out to be just like he's dead.

And the question that was posed to him is why did you choose this mom? And his response was because of my dad. Then they looked for the other twin twin, and they found him. And he was living in a small town. So the first did the first twin the both of them knew of their dad? Yeah. Both of them knew of the dad. Okay. Yep. They found the second twin, and he was in the little village, and he had just won the father of the year, happily married with kids.

The question posed to him was, how did you turn out to be like this? And his response was exactly the same as the first because of my dad. Mhmm. The first one says I just emulate what my father did. The second one says I refuse to do what my father did. Mhmm. The power, the choice is in your hand. So even in the work environment, you can make a decision as to which way you want to go. There's a whole lot of thinking around neuroleadership in in terms of reinforcing positive thinking.

And you're gonna take each and every individual, through that journey in terms of what how do you reinforce positive thinking? And it's It's it's a move. I I love how simplistic you've made it. Yeah. Yet at the same easy. Well, it it's there's a you've worked around the world. There's a difference in my mind for someone who speaks around the world and someone who works around the world. A lot of individuals will speak, so they say, oh, I've worked in this country. No. You didn't.

You went to a building. A bunch of people met at the building. You spoke and you left, and you went on a tour. That's not working in the country. Yeah. There's a big difference culturally about perceptions and and messaging, if I was to it's not as clear as I'd like it to say, but it's that it's not a ubiquitous. It's not a universal understanding of how cultures work.

And I'm gonna give you probably the most shocking or eye opening, and I hate to use the term eye opening, but it's what I'm gonna say, of an example that really it was one of my first real takes on how different we we can see the world. And I was with my first friend I ever made in Hong Kong, lived there for 10 years. And as of COVID, things have changed. And I remember sitting down with her in in her living room in our dining table.

And I looked at her and I said, how do you give a police report? And what I was really asking was how do you see the people that you when you view them? And the answer was shocking in my mind because you've already heard, I'm assuming, people have said, we all look the same. Yeah. And we say we don't look the same. Well, guess what her reaction was? Just take a wild guess was the first thing that she talked about. I've already given you the clue.

She said and this might not be a universal construct. It's hers, so let's just take it as hers. She said, the first thing I would say to the police officer is one eyelid, 2 eyelids, or no eyelids. Woah. That micro detail was the first thing. Yeah. Then she said the bridge of the nose. Then she said the shape of the face. And I'm sitting there because that is not a more of a I'm gonna let let me just use America because I grew up in America. Blonde hair, blue eyed, such and such.

It's a different orientation. And she made comments about the differences between one eyelid, 2 eyelids, and 0 eyelids. There's actually in culture, in her culture, one of them is not very good. Okay. And their hair, if you went back 40 years ago or hair in Asia tends to be black. Yeah. So that's not a distinguishing characteristic.

My point, getting back to this what people see or what they believe, is to change an organization as to also understand that each different message is interpreted so differently in every culture, in every situation, and it could be how tall you were when you grew up, how short you were when you grew up. It could be how how many years you went to university. It could be, did you grow up with 1 parent or 2? Were you economically advantaged? Were you not? I mean, the the list is endless.

So it's it's you made it very simple, and I'm trying to say that I I also appreciate the complexity of this. Is that okay when I added? No. David, I think what you just put on the table, I've seen this play out and my different experiences across the world. I I I would do you know the saying? Let me ask you. Do you know the saying? If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down. I have heard it. Yes. Why did you why have you heard that?

Because it's not in the culture that I've lived in. No. Not in my culture as well. So It was I I had a business in South Africa, and we had we were in Cape Town. And during the last really challenging drought, I remember showing up, and they said we can't flush the toilets. Oh, yeah. It was and they and they said, and they they had water drainage off the roofs off the rooftop, so it went into a bin, and there was a bucket next to the toilet.

And if it's yellow, let it mellow, and everybody used the same toilet. But when it was brown, you flushed it down, but you also used the water from the drainage system. Right. You would you would not understand that if you probably lived in Bali. Well, not even that. I mean, I live in South Africa, but in Pretoria, we didn't have a drought. Oh, okay. So so as we were as we were, getting the aroma of the of the you didn't even know what was going on. But that that's where I learned that.

I learned that in, while I was down in South Africa in, Cape Town working. Yeah. Yeah. No. But I fully agree on the on the on the culture shock, aspect. I've seen that many, many times. But but just coming back to your question, it's it's we're using a specific framework for for change management in the organization. Okay. And by the way, it's a process that's taking 2 years. It's not a switch of the button. It's a a long and tedious process. That much I can say. Okay. You know, it is.

And it and it it's an ongoing process. It's like raising ongoing process. It's raising children. You don't stop raising your children to some degree. Yeah. So So I talk about the knowledge, but the the the other a is the the ability the ability to change. Do you have the ability as an individual to change, as a team, as an organization? And then the last r is reinforcement. So you gotta keep reinforcing, the change elements that you've you've walked through already.

How do you hire in your case, how do you hire for the ability to change? Yeah. That's a very, very good question, David. And I think we've actually really looked at our recruitment process altogether. So when we're doing, going through a recruitment process, apart from just looking at it from a, you know, just an interview process, essentially, you you get a candidate or different candidates, and you pose a whole series of questions to them.

But now we we, ensure that they go through a barrage of different tests. And, also, the culture fit is is one of the tests that we put them through as well, to make sure that there's, some tests that are done to see if there's a fit. And the you know, we have a consultant on hand who actually does all of these for us. And very often, you know, we get it right, but sometimes we get it wrong, unfortunately. And it's never an exact, science.

It's No. No. No. It's there's no button on the back you can press, we said. You know, let's try this again. It's Exactly. You're on your team, is it primarily South Africans? Primarily, yes, but not all of them are South Africans. Primarily, yes. But we do have, foreign nationals working at the, the agency as well. In fact, we Now because this is not this is not a normal question someone would probably possibly ask. Foreign national to me to you could be Botswana, Zambia.

You know, they don't have to be all over the world. So when you if you looked at, let's say, how many of your team are from the continent of Africa? Let's say, probably, 2, 3%, maybe. And so our team is is not big. It's, just over 200. It's about 204. So out of 204 people, how many of them are from South Africa, and how many are outside of South Africa? Okay. I can't give you the exact stats now, but I'm say around about a 194, 5 would be South African.

Okay. So that's when you said 2 or 3, I it kind of what do you mean 2 or 3? So, yes, it is a so it makes it easier for you to be able to create this culture change because like the like my friend Hazel, you tend to see the world with certain equal perspectives, not generally equal across the world, but in in terms of a a bandwidth, it's a standard deviation is closer than it would be otherwise. I'll I'll I'll caution against that. Okay. We're not a monoculture in South Africa.

I think you probably experienced that. Yeah. So the the Africaners, the there's a whole there's 5 different version, 5 or 6 different types. 11 African languages. Yep. And then there's Indians, and you get different ethnicity around that, and then there's coloreds as well. Yeah. So And then there's mix that I feel is mix. Right? When you put them together, it's very dynamic, but you also have your own own challenges. But diversity is very good Okay.

Because you bring different perspectives to the table, which is what I wanted to talk about in the ecosystems with PlanetScale. Go ahead. Yeah. So I just it just coming back to your question. We're talking about values driven, mission led, and how do you bring an organization to embrace the values of the organization and then push through the mission aspect. So there's a whole change management model that we use to to bring each and every individual, staff member on board.

So I just wanted to share that aspect. Yep. Appreciate it. And and maybe, I think we we're getting to the 3rd element, this the ecosystems approach. Okay. When you think about it very carefully, if you look at governments across the world, there there are 2 or 3 priorities that any good government would be pushing at a national level. So one is ensuring there's economic growth. K. Stimulate the economy. And that's goes hand in glove with what we call wealth creation for for the nation.

The second one is improving the quality of life. And you wanna do that when you're making policies around these different aspects, the the social and economic. We talk about the socioeconomic, challenges of, of a country. You need to balance that against the sustainability issues, environmental sustainability, and so on. So if you look at any particular decision that you need to make irrespective, you can give me any particular, you know, decision that needs to be made.

You can frame it in 1 of 3 boxes. It's either has to deal with economic issue, social issue, or an environmental issue. It might have elements or different elements embedded in it, so it could not maybe, not just fit neatly in one of those boxes, but it could have different elements.

So when you're looking at it from an ecosystems point of view, you know, you you're gonna look at as I said when I started off, when we talk about ecosystems, we we're looking at it from a a natural, you know, biological, ecosystem or communities interacting whether it's animals and plants. So we talk about so the word ecosystems come from ecological systems, essentially. And I think there's some really neat aspects around when you're observing these kind of ecological systems.

One of them is if you look at the ecosystem, you have diversity. So diversity is an asset. So the ecosystem is defined by these different elements, but, you know, you're talking about different organisms. And they is an interdependence, and there's a complexity around how they come together. But inside of that ecosystem, you also have road differentiation. You know, different elements have different functions in inside this ecosystem.

But when you put them together, it defines this the system itself. Now one of the important things around the ecosystems is what we call the economies of scale. And and I know this is an economics term, but it's the performance of the ecosystem is overall greater than the sum of its individual elements.

So if you take each and every element within this ecosystem and if you add up their contribution, if you look at it from a systems level, at a systems level, the contribution is greater than the sum of the individual contribution. Mhmm. And I'm gonna come back and just show you how they link up back to, let's say, human made systems or policy systems. And then there's an element of self organization, by the way, inside these natural ecosystems. There's a dynamic balancing.

You know, you have these stability and sustainability, and there's flexibility in terms of how all of these different organisms come together. They organize around each other. But there's also elements of cocreation. There's development parts leading to succession and coevolution inside this ecosystem. And then you also look at mutual beneficiation, mutual benefits. Those symbiotic sort of relationships and partnerships inside the ecosystem.

Now these are kind of observations and characteristics of the ecological systems. Right? Now when you look at it from, you know, even at a national level, we talk about national systems of innovation. The elements that I just spoke about just now in the ecological systems is actually found inside this kind of system that we try to create because that's exactly what we're trying to emulate inside these human made systems.

Because as I said, there's 3 aspects that the drivers for the system is either it's social, economic, or environmental. And it might be a subset of maybe 2 or more of these things. But you have a driver for the system itself, And and and we're gonna talk about space ecosystems just now. But you can reduce any decision making, or decision that you need to make in one of those three areas. Okay. So those are the main tenets of these sort of human driven systems.

So even if you take project Moonhunt, there's a there's an element. You wanna bring the social good back. So there's a social subsystems. There's economic subsystems. There's innovation. You wanna bring the industry in. You wanna look at growth potentials, you know, capacity to produce new goods and services through innovations by using the moon as a base. There's also environmental issues that you'll be looking at. How do you extract natural resources and bring them back as an example?

So you can take any particular decision or project, and you can deconstruct it and you can put in one of these three boxes. One of the things that I picked up is when you're looking at a systems, and we talk about national systems of innovation. And, effectively, what that means is you create this multitude of institutions inside of your national landscape.

But your system is defined not by those nodes, institutional nodes inside of the national system, but the interlinkages and the interactions between those different institutions. Mhmm. That's what defines the ecosystem. And that's where we get a lot of the aspects wrong. So even, for example, one of the things that we are still battling, and I know it's not peculiar to South Africa, by the way. Many nations do have this particular problem. We set up this different institution in this landscape.

But when we do institutional planning, we do it at an institutional level. We do not do it at a system level. This is a systematic problem even in South Africa. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Yes. It's everywhere. Yeah. And by the way, when you're looking at, strategic planning at an institutional level, you gotta take away the unit of analysis being just the the institution itself.

But looking at it from the ecosystem point of view, how do I optimize the institution within the broader ecosystem? And you talked about, you know, the enterprise thinking, and you talked about the 50,000 foot viewpoint. Yep. This is exactly what it is. When you get to the enterprise, you think, at that level. The 50,000 view foot viewpoint is your ecosystem that you're looking at. Yes. And it's interesting because paid to think was written at a time before.

It took 10 years, 10 years to write, something like that. It was written before I got involved in Beyond Earth. And now you'll hear me if you ever hear this phrase. I say the 297,000 mile perspective. Okay. And that is the Mearth line. It is 297,000 miles because the earth is elliptical in wave flows, and there's a distance between it, but we're including outside on the other side of the moon as part of the Mearth ecosystem.

So, yes, the 50,000 foot view is the perspective where you raise up above everything else and you could see everything happening instead of being down in the weeds or the old saying is you can't see the forest from the trees because you're so into it. Exactly. Yeah. And and that viewpoint is essentially looking at it at an ecosystem point of view and understanding the ecosystem. And, so you gotta understand the sort of drivers. What are you trying to change in the ecosystem?

Is it the social progress? Are you looking at economic stability or or growth? Are you looking at environmental stewardship? Those are the drivers that you wanna push, in different institutions, essentially. But you also need to understand the driver interfaces, you know, which is the balancing between these different drivers and the tension points between these different drive. So you could have multiple stakeholders, but each one have a different interest.

It could be a social aspect, the economic, or environmental aspect. But how do you bring all of that together and optimize and balance between those different interest and tension points? Obviously, you're not gonna make everybody happy, but how do you optimize it? That most people are happy. The way So here's a here's a, a challenge that I run into all the time is how do I say this properly?

An individual has a talent or a propensity or a belief structure that has gotten to them to where they are at the moment that they're there. I and I'm gonna take it a jump. I hate what people say. You can't do that. Well, the only reason I'm sitting in front of you is because I did that. So you're telling me I can't do it, but that's why I'm here. So how do you tell me not to do something that has gotten me where I am?

Yeah. So my point is you have somebody who's had a propensity, a belief, a structure, IA, whatever it may be, that got them to the point in which they are brilliant or as good as you'd like them to be at that moment. Yeah. The question then is, if you have a 45 year plan, when do you stop them or change them to fit the new paradigm? Because if you do so too early Mhmm. They will not perform in the way in which is needed. So let me give you an example, and then maybe you can come back with it.

Our our our small project totals, the the four phase of the moon hut is 1,600,000,000,000. The new transport system is 6 is 90,000,000,000. The next system we have on and on and on, it's a little shy of 2,000,000,000,000 across the board. Some of the people we are bringing on are very much into making money. Yeah. But they understand as part of their roles, contracts, negotiations, leveraging assets, economics around the world, being able to find capital. That's what drives them.

If you take that up from underneath them, their their premise for living, if you and that's not a maybe that's a wrong way to say it. Their their their skill set that got them there, we won't be able to achieve our desired outcome. So, therefore, how do you know and this is part of mine. How do you keep the culture where it needs to be? You keep the directive where it needs to be, but you have to let a great skater be a great skater.

You have to let a Ronaldo play the way he is, but you then have to kinda mold them to your environment. How do you manage that? And I think do you understand what I'm saying? No. I understand exactly. It's it's a and when you have a 45 year plan, part of my plan is is in 10 years, we'll change them. You know? Not now because that's how they're good. In 10 years, they'll evolve. But right now, that would be the worst thing to do because that's what made that physicist brilliant. They're arrogant.

They're stubborn. And as you say, in the beginning, they come up with ideas that are radically different, and you want that. Yeah. So how do you approach that? You know, David, I think it it comes back to leadership. So, by the way, every time I engage with the industry, I learn something new. I never enter a conversation assuming that I know everything. Okay. So this open mindedness in terms of listening and trying to drop some of these linkages when you're listening to experts.

How does that fit into the ecosystem? So as you rightfully put, each one is on their own individual journey inside this ecosystem. So we talked about the values driven and the mission led. But under the mission led, you bring in different expertise, whether it's mathematicians or scientists or engineers. But you're gonna bring you know, you're gonna pick the cream of the crop, essentially, to come through and to drive those specific missions.

And, you gotta find a natural home for them in in terms of how they fit into this particular institutional landscape. As much as you're pushing those particular values, you've gotta give them the opportunity to grow. So just to give you an example, a few months ago, we had a technician, wire up a piece of equipment wrongly. Blew it up. Cost about $40,000. Now one of the things we could have done is this is a no no. Sorry. This is not acceptable. There's the door. We didn't do that.

We we we wrote it off to a learning experience. Okay? So the culture of the organization must also create the ability or the room for individuals to be innovative as well and bring their own creative in a spirit as well. Because different things drive different people. Engineers are driven because they want us to see something work. Give them that space.

So the leadership is gonna be very important in terms of how open minded you are in terms of allowing that particular growth, allowing, failures to happen. And I know in some cultures, failures are known. When you fail, you close the project up. I've worked in those cultures, and it's challenging. Yeah. And it comes back to leadership in terms of how you view growth of the the organization. And, safe to say, instead of Senza, we've we've taken radical approaches.

We've got new recruits coming in and saying, hang on. This thing's not gonna work. Can we look at it this way? Of course. Let's try it. Show us. Demonstrate to us. And it works. We've seen some really phenomenal stuff coming out with new colleagues coming with new ideas, new blood. But we find a way of fitting them into the narrative.

And I think when you talk about managing projects, how the leadership sort of cascades down and making sure that everything sort of also cascades up in terms of the delivery of the strategy. And I think that's very key in terms of ensuring the alignment. And I wanna come back to this point. Okay. Yep. No worries. I wanna come back to this point. Let me let me touch touch on it this this way.

When you looking at, changing the organization and and by the way, I'm probably talking about the last, point now is transforming the space ecosystem. Okay. And I will wanna come back to 4 in a moment, but let's let's get this. Go ahead. Transforming the space ecosystem. Okay. So so let let me give you a few insights in terms of what I've observed, in my own institutional landscape. Okay?

One of the things that I picked up is that when the organization was set up, there was a big operational focus. You bring in different institutions. You're clumping them together, and they're all coming with a strong operational focus. And what actually happened is you built your entire enterprise architecture around the enter, around the operations of the organization. Mhmm. So your operations actually drove the enterprise architecture.

K. The problem with that is that you get stuck in a rut because you don't have much flexibility. And we said, hang on. That that cannot be. That's not a business model. Because I said to the colleagues, you know, hang on. We're a small organization. We're about 200 people. If you look at the major institutions, like your NESOs and your ESOs and your CNESOs, you're talking about thousands of people. K?

But how is it that there's so much of innovation and, you know, growth in those particular organizations because they have to deal with legacy systems. So it can't be that operations is driving your enterprise. It's a strategy that must drive your enterprise. K? Now I think you spoke about the goals with productivity principle. And I and I when I looked at this, you know, I kinda smiled, by the way. I it kills me, but it's the only thing that I've ever read.

That's it was somebody else named it after me, so I I That was yeah. Go ahead. Because when when you when I read it, and I actually think that's it was one of your videos that you you shared with me, and I thought to myself, hang on. This is absolutely correct. I've seen it play out over and over again because we invest so much of time on our people issues. But, actually, if you don't get your systems right, you're screwed.

So just just to read, 80% of the results in an organization come from the systems and structure in place, not the people. The people are not the most important part of an organization. And then you gotta watch the video to understand it. Again, it's on TED, but it's the the the reason I'm bringing it up is it's it really is that powerful. And I'm I I even believe it's close to 90%, but no one's gonna believe me until they start to it's like watching the matrix.

When Neo is in that, and I won't give away, but when Neo finally makes that major change, if you haven't seen it yet, that's a big issue. But, that's a challenge. It is where you realize everything you've learned might not be right. Yes. And that's amazing, isn't it? You got you're sitting there. It's the only it's a a typical book is 30 to 50,000 words. A big book is a 100. This is 297,000 words.

Yeah. And in the one the out of the whole book, that's the only thing people bring up almost every time. No. No. No. That can't be. You're like, you're picking 3 pages out of 700 and some odd pages. But it is. It's that true. It is that true. Yeah. It it does resonate. I I've picked it up because you can have the best engineers, scientists in the world working for your organization. But how do you bring them together? And it's your systems. Mhmm. It's your processes.

Yep. And, you know, right now, we're actually going through that process of relooking at our systems. You know? We've we've looked at the enterprise architecture. We've gone cloud computing. We're looking at analytics, business analytics, things that we never considered 2, 3 years ago. But it was an eye opener because when I was reading that particular chapter and look looking at your video, and it's like, this is exactly what we're doing, because it's a glue that brings the people together.

If you do it wrong, everything falls apart. If you do it right, everything moves forward. So it's that it's that important in the structure. Now we do say as part of the this principle is that the people who design the systems and structure Yeah. In this one context are extremely important. They're not more important than the engineer. They're not more important than the architect. But because the architect does a different service.

But the leadership who designs systems and structure at this point is unbelievably valuable because if they don't know how to do it, you end up with organizations with bad culture, you organizations that struggle, organization that have all sorts of challenges over and over and over again. And so, yes, it's a it's a yeah.

Now in your book, you gave a a quite a good example of you know, you you talk about the one company where, you know, this individual said to you, you know, our systems are not working, but we still have to deliver. Yes. And you said the management go and fix your systems. So I was like, okay. Yeah. The the the in that example, they were the management was saying these people were not delivering. They weren't prioritizing in in in a little bit of research.

It didn't take much, can come to find out that their systems break all the time. And no matter if it broke or not, the management still expected the same returns. And I they hired me to do all sorts of work, and I went back and I said, it's a simple fix. Yep. Your computer systems are terrible, and your they'll you'll never be able to get over it without solving that. And that was the the kind of emphasis.

I I, I wanna go back, and then we come back here again because the one thing I wanna hear from you is your definition, and I'm gonna call it beyond earth in the you call it space, but the beyond earth ecosystem. Right. What's your definition of it? What do you see? What's what's your take on the world? Take it any way you'd like. Mhmm. So you mean the definition of beyond Earth? No. No. No. The this ecosystem.

You called it the space ecosystem, and I'm saying, remember, to me, space is a geog is not an industry. It is a geography. So, therefore, it's not space. It is a geography. It's just where you pick in the universe that you're choosing. So when you talk what is the industry this ecosystem like? What is it like on planet Earth? What do you see happening now?

Where do you see from your perspective, your eyes, going back to that analogy, as a in your role, in your country, and what you're trying to accomplish? What do you see when you look out at the ecosystem? And I and please be as blatantly honest as you can. Okay. So when when I talk about the the space ecosystem, okay, there there's 3 different let's say 4 different levels that we look at it from. The first or the top layer is the wire aspect or what I call the thematic areas.

So just to give you a sense, ultimately, what you want to achieve in the space ecosystems is to produce products or services or new in inventions, which could be products in themselves. So those particular products services can be categorized into different domains. Okay? So you could look at remote sensing or earth observation, and these are satellites that are normally in low earth or or orbit. Then you have telecommunications.

And a lot of in fact, the biggest chunk, maybe space exploration is probably exceeding that at the moment. But, I think when you're looking at applications on earth, telecommunications is by far one of the biggest, segments of the global space value chain. Then you have navigation position and timing. And then the 4th one is space exploration. So the space ecosystem includes the MERT ecosystem. So you wait. So navigation you said 3. Navigation? No. So it's earth observation Oh, okay.

Telecommunications. And then the third one is navigation positioning and timing. So it's NPT. And then the 4th one is space exploration. Okay. Yeah. So the top tier is your thematic areas in terms of the products and services that you're trying to push out of this ecosystem. We're squeezing this ecosystem to produce products and services. And it's not products and services to be consumed inside of the space ecosystem alone. It's outside as well. It's a spin off.

Mhmm. We also look at spin ins as well. Okay. So that's by definition how I look at it from the top tier is the domestic areas, which includes beyond earth as well, if that answers the question. So when you look at from a political, economic let's just take those 2 because I could go further. From a political or an economic level or perspective, what do you see when you look out today?

So at the moment, if I look at beyond Earth in terms of the activities, I think we we only of the starting block. We we know we're close to talking about, a Mearth economy just yet. Okay. It's gonna happen. That much I know because there's quite a number of initiatives around the moon, Mars, and so on. But at the moment, it's more exploratory. Let's get a rover down. Let's investigate, whether there's moisture in the soil. What does the geology looks like?

And it's more the precursor missions to what's yet to come. Okay? And then as the, you know, technology defines your launch vehicles and that ability to get there much quicker, much easier, I think that's when, like, project moon art, We will see them taking traction. And I think you you need there's a lot of work from what I'm hearing already in the pipeline. Yes. We've got a ton. Yeah. Exactly. So all of that is coming to fruition, but it's in the pipeline, and it's gonna come up.

What what about the geopolitics that again, I'm only asking because of your role. If you weren't in the role, I wouldn't be asking this, but we've got, challenging positions globally as to where things are gonna be done, who's going to do them, who gets the benefit from them. Yeah. Countries were not you can't work with them. You can't work with these people. There's a lot of that. What's your political I don't know how much you could say, but Yeah. Yeah. What's your thoughts on this?

So just maybe to give you some insights, and you probably know this. So if you look at the UN treaties and conventions, and you look at the number of countries that have signed up or ratified the moon treaty, there's not many countries that have done so. And the question is, why haven't they done that? There's always this issue around, so what is the mutual benefits? When you look at the outer space treaty, you know, outer space is meant to be the province of all mankind.

So if nation x goes to the moon and there's some economic benefits, then it should both benefit all mankind. The question is, does that include economic benefits as well? So if you've spent a $1,000,000,000,000, so who should the economic benefits go to? Should it be the nation state that actually spent the $1,000,000,000,000 or all of mankind?

And, if you bring back mining resources or resources that are mined from, and now you're trying to influence national economies or global economies, sorry, who should that benefit? Those are the open ended questions that that hasn't been answered yet, and I think that's what's detracting us from moving towards a unified framework around the moon and and so on. And by the way, these these have been long standing issues. Oh, even in my short time involved in this Yeah. These are heated debates.

Yeah. They they're they're not universally understood. And in my small little thing that I'm doing here, I get 30 page documents that people write about how the world should be changed. I'm like, really? You spend all this time? What have you done about it? Well, I wrote the paper. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. I'm I'm congratulations. You wrote a paper. What are you doing about it? And it's it's not easy when you, I I have a lot of friends that are live in China.

I have a lot of friends that live in Russia. I have a lot of friends that live in Europe and in in Africa and in in South America and the and in Australia. I have people all over the world that I love and appreciate, and those individuals are great individuals. And this whole political overlay is often a challenge in my mind because to me, we are bringing every that's what we wanna do is bring everybody together.

It doesn't it it doesn't matter what border you have, what language you speak, how you were brought up. We're not we're not aiming towards government. That's not our that's not our macro tactic. Ours is to bring individuals from around the world to help us wherever they can. Yeah. Absolutely. By the way, I should mention this to you. There's a joint initiative between Russia and China Yes. On, sort of, I think it's also lunar mission. Yes. It is.

Yep. And just by the way, South Africa is part of the BRICS. There's all Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Mhmm. So we've been invited to express our interest in joining this. So this is what we're doing in the next week or 2, essentially. This is how does South Africa work in. Right? And it it's it's one world. Yeah. And it's it's it's part of how why we are not as visible. We're not looking to play that game. We want people from South Africa to be involved.

We want people from wherever their skill is that's a value to moving us forward. Yet if you look at those 6 6 mega challenges again and you look at what could happen with a 16 a 15 CMC level water rise or a 30 CMC level rise, but let's just take 15, which is 6 inches, the world will be a different place. And the pressures to be able to deliver solutions will not be as you'll be fighting a 1, you'll be fighting on 2 fronts. The front is, where do we take people? How do we take care of society?

And the other one is, where do we take them? Yeah. And our hope is with what we're doing is that someone will say, hey. You know, you ever hear about these these projects, we're not crazy people? They're the they're the people who've been using the right tire. Yeah. But but what you're doing, David, is breaking the rules or breaking the protocols. Yeah. And we're trying to that's in I've said this many times.

The the Beyonder of the ecosystem likes to pound their chest on all the things that they're working on. We appreciate that because we get to hear about it, but that's not who we are. We are keep your head down. Do the work. Let's just keep on working and find the right people who want to build. Yeah. And that's a different approach. So we've we've covered the space ecosystem, the trend is there anything else? This is fascinating.

Is there anything else based upon our conversations before that you you've are top of mind or something that you didn't bring up that you would love to have said something about? Yeah. Just to give you a quick perspective in terms of just completing this picture around the space ecosystem. So I I've I've looked at the products and services, in those 4 thematic areas. But you also have to look at it from the building blocks perspective. Okay?

So there's, there's also about, 4, maybe 5 building blocks. There's the human capital element. And so you gotta build warm bodies into the system. So you your mathematicians, your scientists, your engineers, your technicians, you gotta have, that capacity or capability to be able to deliver on those particular missions. Then you need to look at a robust industry. So you have to have a industry base. And I've talked about, space 4.0, which is essentially where we are at the moment.

It's a big industry footprint into the ecosystem. You've even seen billionaires across the world turning their attention to the space industry, and there's quite a few out there. And then you're gonna look at it from the infrastructure perspective. What infrastructure do I need to put down? Those are that is also a key building block. But an element which is what we're talking about is the international partnerships. Mhmm. You know?

Bringing in different international players that we could leverage on each other's cap capacity and even from an economics of scale point of view. How do we put our resources together to develop to deliver something that's much greater that we could deliver individually? You gotta look at the intellectual property aspects of the ecosystem. How do you manage that if you have different partners involved?

And I think those are the kind of tricky issues that this probably fueling some of the geopolitics at the moment, so the intellectual property issue, you know, you know, you have the ITAR and all of that, in terms of regulations. But then you get down to the maybe the third level is the functional activities. You define your products and services, then your building blocks, what's needed to give you effect to the ecosystem.

Daily, you know, grind in terms of what you actually do on a daily basis, as your mission requirements so you can take your project Moon Hut, for example. What's your mission requirements? What's the core? What's the purpose? What sort of technologies do I need to make this mission possible? What are the enabling technologies? Do I need to do further research and development? Do I need new technologies to be pushed into this value chain?

And once I get up and going, you know, launching and operating, mission operations, and then, obviously, the last aspect is coming back to the first tier, which is a product and services, which is what I call your space applications, building those applications, and then also your your products. But, some of the the higher level framing of that is including the space law and policy. And by the way, at the moment, I should mention this.

I'm working with some of the colleagues to to build what is called an African Space Policy Institute because that's something that's missing in the African landscape. When we're looking at it, how do we position the African space ecosystem within the global ecosystem? So this is where the ecosystems come in, typically. Yeah. And then you could look at the space ecosystem from a national point of view. So you could get different levels of the ecosystem as well.

And then the the the the other element that we we've spoken a lot is the strategy and the business models, at an institutional perspective. So when you take all of this together and you put it into an ecosystem sort of framing, how do all of these things come together? How do you get human capital in in how do you get the industry engaging into the value chain? What sort of infrastructure? Who's responsible for that?

You guys start looking at the interlinkages between these different players that I need to pull together into in the sandpit. And what is the role of the space agencies in itself? And I've seen many countries that assume that they're responsible for doing everything in the ecosystem, which is actually quite foolish. You have to differentiate between your role and the role of other role players.

Just some quick elements in terms of, you know, if you wanna make the ecosystem fully functional, you know, we very often and I think the problem or the challenge that you highlighted, David, in terms of what you gonna be doing different on project moon hunt. Very often, we tend to play the zero sum game. Now there's one winner and there's one loser. But I think what we are playing in an ecosystem is a multi sum game where everybody wins or everybody loses.

And that's what you're trying to do with project movement. Correct. Everybody walks away with a value of a future. Yes. And there's no sort of competitiveness against you know, we gotta beat country x, or we gotta beat country y. It's let's work together, as a collective. And I think I mentioned that your your success is determined by the collective behavior rather than the goals that you just articulate.

And then you are gonna drive a value system when you're when you're looking at that multi sum game. You know? Respect, trust and dignity, excellence, responsibility, teamwork, innovation, achievement, fairness. How do you bring all of those to play when you're bringing your team together? And that comes back to the, you know, the values and the the culture that we've spoken about earlier on. But, also, we talked about the systems, by the way. And come back to the system.

One of the reality checks is you could work with legacy systems. You do more of the same that you've done for the last 10 years and think that you can beat the crap. But, actually, that doesn't work because all you're doing is working harder. What you really need to do, and this is where systems really cut to the core, is work smarter. And by the way, there's this metamorphosis that happens, you know, with a caterpillar.

Yeah. Yep. It's working quite hard, and there's a metamorphosis that happens. It becomes a butterfly. Much more efficient, much more beautiful, working smarter. Well, that's a perspective of the butterfly. The caterpillar might have thought. You know, look at look at my legs. You know, I got a lot of legs. Yeah. So, you know, you gotta there's a perspective. You gotta be careful. Absolutely. You just insulted the caterpillars. Well, look. You can't become a butterfly without the caterpillar.

Right? So you gotta start somewhere, but you don't wanna stay a caterpillar all your life. Right? I I I I again, I'm you're stepping into what I don't know if a lawsuit's coming from some caterpillars. You just violated the you believe that caterpillars are inferior, that they become beautiful, but they're not. But they both serve a purpose at some point. But they yeah. They both serve a purpose. They both it's I I'm again, I'm joking with you.

It's one of those things that it's very difficult to be able to articulate what is that that's why when we were well, it's very difficult to articulate what is a better what is better. So some people think better is more economic growth, and yet we have seen that some of the happiest people on the planet have nothing. We have said, well, it's it's more community, but sometimes more community ends up with more conflict.

There is no one answer to everything, and that's why our final statement is to improve life on earth for all species. It is not to say which what is better life because we don't know that. But our objective is to improve life on earth for all species and climate change, mass extinction, resource, explosive impact, displacement, unrest, and, explosive, explosive god. I can't remember the word now. They those will influence what tomorrow will be. And when we look at that, the happiness index Yes.

When you're light and this is my take. This is just my opinion. If your life is looking at a TikToks at a screen and telling everybody how great you are, that's not we're designed for more. We're designed for more. And it's not to say that someone they're doing is bad, but maybe we need something else that's a little bit bigger to look for. And I think that the the we're working on that. Val, I've I've gotta say this is I I like all the interviews, brilliant. You were here. You were present.

I absolutely loved that. I do love the 2 and a half hours we had prior because we really got to know each other, and that's part of the value of this process. And I appreciate the connections you've given us so that we can bring other individuals into the fold, and they're gonna be doing podcast too. So you have been absolutely fan fabulous. So thank you. Right. Thank you. No. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. I really appreciate and enjoyed the conversation.

And I'm gonna send you $25 for all the advertising that you've done for paid the thing. Oh, okay. You know, I I I I have sent we have sent out so many books. We have sent out so many of the the free PDFs or the Kindle reader versions. Our real desire of writing that book for 12 year or for 10 years, was 12 years actually, was to just improve how we look at the world and how we can be better at what we are doing.

And I appreciate, once again, all of those comments because you're reaffirming that the work we did was valuable because it you don't get paid for 12 years. You make money, but that's not the value. So Yeah. I wanna I wanna thank you, and I I wanna thank everybody who's been listening to take for taking the time out of your day to listen in. I do hope that you too learn something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

The Project Moon Hut Foundation, you've heard many times today, which is fantastic is we're looking to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon, a home. That's what it stands for, a box of the roof and a door. We're not about colonization or settlement. Those are bad words all over the world.

So we wanna establish a home on the moon and then create this new Mearth ecosystem through the accelerated development of the, Mearth ecosystem that we will take those innovations, the paradigm shifting, the endeavors, and turn them back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. And thank you, Val. You are amazing. Is there one single best way that individuals who would like to can get a hold of you? Yes, David. So I can give you my email.

I I did mention to you that I'll be stepping down end of next month. You mentioned that to me on the 2 and a half hour call. You didn't mention to. So you are stepping down in next month. Yes. That's right. Yes. So I can give you my personal email. It's Val Munsami. So it's val [email protected]. Yahoo.com. So for me, if anybody's interested in connecting, I'd love to connect with you. You can reach me at [email protected]. You can connect with us at Twitter at at project moonhut.

Me personally at at goldsmith. We're on LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram. We do have Project Moon not there, and also mister David Goldsmith. So there's multiple ways you can get a hold of me if you're interested in talking. And that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening. Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the age of infinite. Throughout history, humans have made significant transformational changes, which in turn lead to the renaming of periods into ages.

You've personally just lived through an experience called the information age, and what a ride it has been. Now consider that you may be right now living through a transitioning period into a new age, the age of infinite.

An age that is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but by a redefining lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and infinite resources, which we made possible through a new construct where the moon and the earth, as we call it Mearth, will create a new ecosystem and a new economic system that will transition us into the infinite future. The ingredients for an amazing sci fi story that will come to life in your lifetime.

The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hut Foundation, where we look to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, a moon hut, h u t, we were named by NASA, through the accelerated development of an earth and space based ecosystem, then to use the innovations, the paradigm shifting, and the endeavors to turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species.

Today, we're gonna be covering another great topic, reframing priorities to accelerate the space ecosystem. And today, we have us have with us Val Munsami. How are you doing, Val? I'm doing great, David, and quite looking forward to this conversation. So am I. Val has a great historical background in terms of what he's done. He's right now the CEO of the South African National Space Agency.

He has a PhD in physics from the University of Natal, a master's in business leadership from the University of South Africa. He's been to the International Space University, and he also has a certificate in international air space, and telecommunications law from the University of Pretoria. That's a lot, Val. You've done a you've been studying a lot at least. Okay. So let's one thing that has come up recently that I've now added to all the podcast is this.

Individuals have asked me, how do these podcasts operate, or do you know the information in advance. This is how a podcast works. It's a small but very valuable added piece. 1st, a guest is selected. Val was selected. 2nd, the guest watches 2 videos are on the project Moon Hut website in the top right hand corner, number 1 and 3. 3rd, we have a call. And during that call, I ask Val what would he teach me. And then we work to find what that topic is. I looked it up.

Val and I spoke for 2 hours and 28 minutes on our first call just to decide the title. And then last, what we do, not last, but 4th is they the individual then goes out. They work on their content. I don't hear about it. I don't see it. I don't have any knowledge of what they're going to be covering, and then they come back and we have the program. So right in front of me now, I have about 12 blank pieces of paper. And just like you, we're looking to learn from Val. So let's get started.

Val, do you have some bullet points for us that we're gonna be following? Yeah. No. Thanks, David. So so the topic as we'd agreed was reframing priorities to accelerate space ecosystems.

So in the running order of the narrative that I wanna put forward, I just wanted to give you a sense of my own personal journey because I think it's quite important to give you a sense as to how different elements of my own experience kind of come together in the end, which brings some, I think, some unique insights into the space ecosystem, which we don't know. So just so number 1 is personal journey. Yes. Okay. What's number 2? So number 2 is the the, you know okay.

Let me just put the title of it. Strategic planning essentially. Strategic. Okay. So a lot of us go through strategic planning, but I wanted to just contextualize that. Okay. Number 3. Is the ecosystems approach, And I wanna draw from ecosystems. These are natural systems. To care on nature. Now draw specific characteristics, which I think are very unique and important for organizations today. And then I wanna drill down specifically into what what I refer to as the space ecosystem.

And then that's the 4th element. And the 4th element is how do you transform the space ecosystems? So that's the the the 5th and last element in terms of the outcome. It's interesting while you're you said it in the beginning. When I type this title, I don't remember us saying space ecosystems, which was interesting. You added the s, and you added it again. So I'm I'm interested to hear how you've made that transition because it was space ecosystem when we first did it. So this is great.

So let's start. Number 1, let's start with number 1. What's your personal journey? Yeah. So I started off, you know, very narrowly focusing on on the science aspect. So, you know, I went through and got my PhD in physics, essentially. But I started off in solid state physics, but then migration to space physics later on. So that was my essential stepping stone into the career world.

But then as I started to get into the, the science aspects of it, I then moved on, and I sort of joined the department of trade and industry and looked at it from a regulatory perspective. So I was working in a section for the nonproliferation of the weapons of mass destruction. So you're talking about dual use technology. Yeah. Dual use technologies, how do you limit, you know, the access to dual use technologies, especially when there's security concerns around that.

And so I dealt with the the space elements and then also the nuclear, delivery systems and and so on. So how do we control all of it? So I worked in that sort of regulatory environment. And then I left, and I joined, an institution called the National Research Foundation. Before you get there, I I'd like to jump back for one second.

Sure. I and I I never thought about this until some of the work that we're doing inside of project Moon Hut is you just you were in physics, and then you focused on space physics. What does space physics mean? So there's there's different elements to space physics. So I specifically focused on what is called magnetospheric physics. So if I can give you a quick run through Yeah. Please. It looks like. Okay. So the sun is sort of a lack of nuclear furnace.

So it's converting hydrogen to helium, and there's a lot of energy that expelled. And so on a continuous basis, the sun is spewing out radiation and plasma. Okay. So radiation is the light that we see, but there's also sort of heat. And then the plasma is sort of ionized particles coming through from the sun. But the sun is also magnetized. It's got a magnetic field.

So when it's spewing out these, plasma, essentially, it's spewing out charged particles, but also magnetic field remnants coming out of the, the solar surface. Now on a quiet day, when nothing is happening on the surface of the sun, the plasma is actually streaming out of the sun radially outwards at 400 kilometers per second. That's the sort of average speed. Okay? That's 400 kilometers per second, which is quite energetic. Yeah. You're now and again, you get these okay.

First of all, there's a number of cycles. You get the 11 year cycle, the the sunspot cycle. So you have a number of, sunspots and and they go through, you know, highs and lows over 11 year cycle. Mhmm. But at the maximum, you get these, coronal mass ejections where you get this massive intensity of plasma spewed out. And they've come flying out, and that can go up to 800 to a 1000 kilometers per second. K?

Now an important aspect is all technology in Earth is affected by this solar wind or the solar storm that's coming out from the sun. Okay? And just to give you a sense of how that happens, the only thing that's protecting us is the Earth's magnetic field. So if you've done a bit of physics, you know, Maxwell's equation says Yes. Charged particles can't cross the magnetic field lines. They get trapped by the magnetic field lines.

So what actually happens is the these charged particles, they cannot get trapped in these radiation belts around the earth. You might have come across the radiation belts. And then if you think of it, it's like a tail. If you've ever held a sling shot in your hand, and if you pull the sling and you far enough and it snaps, that sling comes flying forward. And that's essentially what happens is you you're pulling the magnetic field lines on the night side.

So on the day side, it's sort of squashing the magnetic fields, a few lines. And then on night side, it's pulling into a long sling like, and then it suddenly it snaps. And all of that energy that's packed into that magnetic field comes flying with that magnetic field lines towards the earth. Where does that radiation go? It goes into the polar ionosphere. This is how you get the auroras, by the way. Okay. Yep. So the night sky gets lit up, so you have a greenish pinkish hue.

So when these charged particles come into the polar atmosphere, they hit the nitrogen and the oxygen atoms. So when they eat the nitrogen atoms, they kind of have a sort of a pinkish hue. Pinkish color sort of lights up. If it hits the oxygen atoms, you get the greenish sort of color. Now effectively what's happening is you're bumping up the electrons in these, oxygen nitrogen atoms to higher states. And when they come back to the ground state, they emit either light or energy.

And the light that you see is that characteristic of oxygen and nitrogen. That's how you see the auroras of it. So your study, you decided out of all of these places, and the reason I'm bringing it up in my head is to know where you're coming from when you're talking is you decided not to go into you and I have spoken about orbital mechanics. You decided to go into magnetospheric, physics, and that was because you thought it could what by knowing this?

Right. So, effectively, as I said, it affects all technology, but, specifically, from a space point of view, you cannot embark on a spacewalk or even launch a rocket during maximum, solar storm because you have excessive radiation, okay, up in the sort of upper atmospheres into the terrestrial solar, atmosphere as well. So you cannot do a manned space flight or a spacewalk outside of the, let's say, the International Space Station when these events are happening.

There's also, satellites that get damaged during these, solar events. So there's, you know, you lose 1,000,000,000 of dollars essentially because of damage to satellite. It's the biggest insurance in industry that's looking at this as well. So you ensure your satellites are getting specific damage. And by the way, on 10th December last year, we had one of our satellites reenter called SumandilaSat. And it was actually damaged 2 or 3 years after it was launched because of a solar stop.

So effectively, you got charged particles that are interacting with the electronics inside of the satellite, and you know what happens. Yeah. Just fries. Yeah. Okay. So Yeah. Getting back to so now I know you you you took this path, then you got involved with nonproliferation or doom. Yeah. Must have been a nice conversation at the dinner table. Yeah. Yeah. We're we're deciding how the world is gonna fall apart. Then the security and nuclear regulatory. What happened after that?

So after that, I joined what is called the National Research Foundation, and I was essentially responsible for international, agreements. So these are all the bilateral agreements signed by the Department of Science and Technology, with other countries at a intergovernmental level. Okay? And so there's quite a number of I think we are dealing about 30 different, international agreements. About 5 or 6 on African continent and the rest were abroad.

And then I dealt with, the International Council For Sciences. We had, like, about 35 or 36 different scientific areas. So we would have national committees, like, for food, you know, safety or brain, sciences or whatever the case may be, pharmaceuticals. So you'll have a committee on different scientific disciplines. And so we used to provide a structure function to bring those different, focus areas, in terms of how we could look at it strategically at the national level.

And then I also dealt with multilaterals like the nonaligned movement, and then there's also the atomic energy, you know, corporation internationally. So there was multilateral. There was Africa bilateral. So I dealt with the international relations, essentially. And after that, I then joined the Department of Science and Technology, and that's where I thought I think where my career really kicked off on the space side.

Because then I got really good insights in terms of developing strategies, policies at a for a space sort of ecosystem or let's call it the national space program, including setting up the South African National Space Agency at that time and looking at the different regulatory instruments and so on.

And then I kind of climbed up, and then I became the deputy director general for research development and innovation and started to look at intellectual property, setting up a institute for the National Intellectual Property Management Office, a technology innovation agency. I think in in the States, we call it the value of death. We call it the innovation chasm in South Africa. Trying to go from r and d into the commercial domain, and sometimes there's a gap that you have to bridge.

And then also including astronomy, like, the biggest radio, program at the moment is called the Square Kilometre Array. And so and then I come into sense. And the reason I'm painting this personal journey, when I come into an agency function at management high level management level, I've got to engage with scientists. I've gotta engage with the regulatory aspects of the business. I've gotta be clued up with the international context. I'm gonna be clued up with the policies, with the strategies.

So all of what I've learned on my journey sort of gets folded quite nicely into an executive level position is where I am now as the head of the agency. So that continuous learning different elements of what I've learned through the years actually gets packaged quite nicely. And I think because of that experience, I can look at ecosystems from very different perspectives. It's not a single track. I didn't stay on the scientific track, only.

So I've I can look at issues from international perspective, regulatory, and I think that kind of aspect is quite key in terms of how you unpack ecosystems. And, by the way, you gave me a copy of your book to read, paid to think. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. I I I when I was reading it, I said, well, okay. And I did mention to you that I'm actually writing a book called building sustainable space ecosystems. Yep. And I started to put quite a few points down.

And as I was reading your book, I was like, wow. You are essentially articulating the kind of things that I'm trying to articulate, but there's a there's a whole host of complementarity in terms of what you put down in your book and how I saw it. And and I thought, wow. This is amazing because now we're having the conversation today. I I I love it. And it it pay paid to think is a interconnectedness model of understanding of how we actually operate. So Absolutely.

What you're talking about when you use the term ecosystems, it's an interconnectedness that has to happen. And so I'm I'm glad that there's some similarities in there because it makes it a lot easier easier to have the conversation when you understand those principles. So great. Great. So so that's the the first, aspect of the outline is my personal journey.

Just to put that in context, then I can draw on those elements as we go I I love it, and I actually the the thing what surprised me, and I've let's not call it a surprise, but you you you look up somebody's history. And in my case, I had to look it up to do this short introduction, and we only have 1 or 2 lines. That's all we put in the introduction. I'm looking and saying, wow.

You know, even the law side, the the masters in business leadership and and the physics and all of those pieces show a a perspective a broader perspective than someone who just focuses on orbital mechanics or is a a specialist in the area. So I do love that you have that, complete crossover across all of that. So, yeah, good's great. Yeah. And just maybe one departure point, David. I mean, pay to think again. Right? So your ability to make decisions is based on your experience.

Mhmm. If your experience is limited, your ability to make decisions will also be limited. Yes. So when you look at a particular problem statement, you're gonna look at it from your personal experience. And but if you have a diverse set of experiences, then that's gonna, you know, really be good for you in terms of how you articulate and kind of look at that problem statement from different lenses, essentially. So very powerful aspect. Yeah. I think you're talking about the tool redefining.

That's it. Yes. Redefining is so unbelievably powerful. Yeah. And and you hit on 2 points. 1, the challenge statement is very important and how much time. That's actually what you and I were working on when we were creating the title is if you could see, there's now a similarity in there is what is the real challenge? What is the real challenge? We were kind of moving up that value chain.

But the other one that I love that you've brought up, which is fantastic because you you do get it, is that organizations will often bring in a person who says, okay. Let's let's address this topic, and then everybody go out and learn something, and then come back. And I said, no. No. It's already too late. You have to have people at the table who, while you're having these discussions, have that breadth, knowledge, scope, the vastness of whatever they're bringing to the table.

So when the challenge comes up, they say, oh, wait. Wait. Wait. Macadonia, 2015, we ran into that. No. No. No. We we we had that in the Congo, but it was in it was in agriculture, And we can cross pollinate that idea to this. But if you're waiting for people to grow to them, that becomes a challenge. It it becomes even more difficult. So picking your team, extremely important, and having that diversity that you have is is absolutely fantastic. Yeah. There is a podcast, by the way.

I don't know if you know I don't know if I shared this. If you look up Ought Mehta, which is in Dubai, I did a not a podcast, a TED Talk. And you could find it on ted.com, just David Goldsmith, or you can look up Aut, Autmeth, Meta, m e t h a, I think. You can look it up, and you can see there's a I TED talk on redefining. So that might be helpful to you also, Brau. Yeah. K. Great. And just maybe to ease into this second aspect is the strategic planning.

And I was reminded, many years ago when I was having a conversation when I was at the Department of Science and Technology with my director general. And we were talking about something, and I said to him, you know, there are 2 people that come to work at this organization. 1, people that are extremely passionate about what they do. There's a different element of cohort of people that come in just to collect a paycheck, essentially.

Mhmm. And you'll see this aspect sort of resonate inside of organizations as a collective. Now what I've painted is individuals and how they get to get, you know, into the organization. But when you look at organizations collectively, and it comes back pay to think. Executives, how do we look at the organization? There's two ways of how you actually approach, you know, in terms of the organizational challenge. 1, you either play not to lose.

So you can do the bare minimum that you have a clean audit. Your finances are, you know, right up there. You kind of take your strategy year on year. You just bump it up a little bit. You just keep it going, essentially. There's another element. I know it's I think many, there are probably fewer of these kinds of organizations where you're playing to win. There's a vast difference between playing not to lose Mhmm. And play to win.

Yes. And I think paid to think is essentially what differentiates executives who actually are paid to think and executives who are just there to warm a seat. I'm smiling here, and I'm gonna say this for a moment. For anybody who's listening, we don't have the video on. It's done intentionally so you don't see the person. You don't see these reactions. So that's why I'm saying Val can't see me. I'm doing notes. He's doing his thing. So let's get back.

So I'm smiling here because, yes, paid to think is about winning, and I even would say project Moon Hut is because we cannot lose. We have to win. That that's that's our entire that's our entire mantra. We see the 6 mega challenges coming. We see the challenges that we're facing in the future. We are not about science research and exploration. We are about creating the Mearth economic system and ecosystem, and we even the word space, we don't use the word we try to get away from that.

We try to use the word space. We because space is a geography. It is, space is not an industry. It's a geography. And so we're really talking about beyond earth. You just have to pick the geography in because we we are planning on winning. So, yes, I I like that analogy. It was very good that that not an analogy, the comparison between losing and winning.

Yeah. And I I sort of looked at you know, in your book, you talk about enterprise thinking and the 4 elements, strategizing, performing, forecasting, and learning, you know, at the enterprise level. And that's essentially what we are paid to do, essentially. So so when I looked at my experience in terms of and and by the way, I must, share this with you. When I joined the Department of Science and Technology, my supervisor was reporting to at the time.

One of my first job was to, sort of facilitate the development of a national space strategy. And I landed up in the first day, and the first directive was, can we maybe find a group of consultants who can come in and help us to write the strategy? And my first response was, it's like, why did you employ me for Yes. If this is my job, why do you want these companies to come in and and do this? I'm I'm not understanding. And the response was, okay. So you think you can do it?

It's it's worth a try. It's nothing worse than not trying. Well, there is something worse. If it means that that, like, the world's gonna fall apart because you didn't get the plan done on time, that would be worse. But you're saying, yeah. This is my job. You brought me into the design. Let me play with this toy, this this strategy. Let let me see what I could do. Yes. Exactly. And throw me in the deep end, and that's the only way I'm gonna learn to sew.

So I went to the, executive in the department at that time and was responsible for strategic planning for the organization. My first question to him was, is there a methodology that you use in terms of developing strategies? And he looked at me and he smiled, and he said, I'm sorry. There's none. Go and figure it out yourself. Oops. Okay. Harold. That's that was bad news for me. It's like, it's okay. This is not the end of the world. We can we're going to figure this out.

So I I think I mentioned to you, I started that position in the department, on the 1st July 2007. The strategy was completed by December 2007 in 6 months. Okay. Okay. And the That's good. Actually, I'm gonna comment. That's good. Yeah. Because no great very few great plans happen overnight or in a 2 day retreat. They take time to evolve. You have to you have to be sitting at dinner. You have to be talking to people and say, I screwed up a week or two later.

And most people who are creating plans where they say they did in the weekend, they thought about it for 7 years. Yeah. And that weekend is when it came out of them, but it wasn't created in that weekend. Yeah. And by the way, I didn't realize back then.

And as I kind of learn now and I, you know, look to, you know, courses around, like, design thinking, for example, where you engage your customer base to figure out, you know, there's minimal viable products and there's agile, you know, sort of planning and so on, you know, in terms of how you develop the minimal products and share with your customer and you build on that.

Back then so the the plan that I put together was saying, let's invite all of the government departments that are using, space products and services. Let's put them in the room and let's ask them the question, if we had to set up a space program, what is it that you want us to deliver on? So that was essentially taking a user requirements Yeah. Approach. K? So how can we make this agency relevant to you as the end user?

And I didn't realize it back then, but that was really where this thing really started to shoot properly. So I I've I've got a Yeah. Who did you invite? Because well, who did you invite first because I've got this huge smile on me. I gotta know what the how you did determine who uses beyond Earth. So how did you how did you how did you make this list? How was the wedding list put together? It was great because so what I did was I said, okay. The first thing, let's write a letter of invitation.

We knew the number of government departments. I think at that time, we had about 30 year old government departments. I think about 33. And, so we wrote a a letter from our director general to each and every other department or the director generals of each and every other department saying, this is our intention. We know that they we we knew at that point in time that many government departments have what is called GIS units, geographic information systems. Okay?

Where they're using geographic, or geospatial information for planning, for developing policies, and so on. So we invited from each of those departments a representative to come and sit and engage with us. So the director general in those departments had the leeway to choose who they want to be represented or or represent the department. So that's the approach I took. Well, I the okay.

So the reason I asked it, which is, I I wanted to hear what your answer was first, is right now we're using we're recording this on Zoom. So, therefore, Zoom is using technology beyond Earth. Then firefighters, the outfits that they wear, the shielding came from beyond earth. We have the the the glasses that I'm wearing. Just the glasses I'm wearing are beyond earth. The exercise equipment, baby food, freeze dried food, solar panels, cordless drills.

I I the list is endless, yet most individuals, including myself when I got involved in this, don't know that they all come from ideas generated from beyond Earth activity. Yeah. So my point was, how did you define? Because you could theoretically said, farmer, you need us. Dental offices, you need us. Firefighters, come on board. You could have picked anybody. Exactly. Absolutely. But the the it kind of came back to how we framed the problem statement.

Okay. Because it was Just because you're reading paid to think, I'm gonna call it a challenge statement. So the challenge statement. Yeah. Well, the the reason is, Val, and it's very simple. A Yeah. Problem is a is a very negative. An opportunity is very positive. And a challenge statement is new neutral. So if I walked up to you and said, I've got a problem. Oh, wow. But if I said to you, Val, I've got a challenge. Mentally, in that one second, you say, oh, let me see if I can help you.

A challenge is a neutral version of more of a pop a forward oriented thinking as compared to a problem. So you'll always hear me say, our team laughs at me, and they now do it too, is that, is because a a challenge just sets a different mindset. So I'm going to kind of push you in that direction since you're reading. Sorry. Yeah. So so let me tell you what the challenge back in the day was.

Yep. We knew that government departments had this GIS units that were using geospatial information to make decisions, essentially. Now here's the problem. A government department would go to an international satellite vendor or satellite operator and said, I say, I need image imagery or satellite imagery over this particular area because I need to make policy level decisions on this area.

Another government department would go to the same satellite operation and say, I need satellite images over this area. And very often, what you'd find is multiple government departments going to the same satellite operator asking for the same image over the same area. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. It's a geography. It's a geography. Yeah. And he said, hang on. There's something wrong because we are government. We are 1. We're not we might be 33 different divisions, but we are 1.

So why should we be paying multiple times? And this is essentially when we set up the agency, how we pay for a multi use a single license, multi user, a single yeah. It's Yeah. It's a single license with multi multi user. Yes. Yeah. So we buy the image once, and it gets used across government. The cost saving along those lines alone was significant. Oh, do you have any number?

Because it would be unbelievably significant based on a a budget where 33 buyers are buying the same thing, and then one buys it and says, can we can we repurpose it? So do you know what type of savings you were able to generate? It's massive. I can't give you that off my head because it's it's it changes from year to year. But give me give me a sense. Was that, and you could do it in rand if you want, if you could do whatever currency you'd like.

But what's the what might you be spending before, and what might what did it switch from? So Yeah. Because it I think scale is important. Yeah. So A wild guess. It it could be reduced the cost by a factor of anywhere between 10 30 Okay. At a national level. Okay. And and that's huge. That's huge if you multiply it across multiple different service offerings. And if you are spending and I'm gonna convert it to US dollar.

If you're spending a 1,000,000 US dollars and now you're spending a 100,000, but you've done that 8 times Yeah. So you've got 8,000,000 to 800,000 or whatever those numbers, it could be larger because of the 30. That ends up being real money. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. And by the way, I should also maybe, just indicate, and you can look this up. Landsat, the US Landsat Yep. When it was first launched. So, NASA and NOAA were involved in that particular mission.

Define define Landsat for a moment. So It it's one of the first, remote sensing satellites that we're now into space. Yep. Okay. So initially, it was paid for by government, and then the end users used to pay to access that information or, let's say, satellite imagery coming out of that satellite. But what actually happened eventually, Chris said, hang on. The challenge we have is is that limited uptake. But we're having a problem because governors already pay for this.

So why should another government department be pay didn't pay for this as well? You're paying twice. So let's make this freely available. Okay? Because government has paid for it. Yeah. You already have it. It's your it's your image, your file, your data. Absolutely. And you can go look at the stats. There was an exponential uptake of the satellite imagery across the government departments just by taking that one policy decision. I I love how you just reframe that.

And why I'm why I'm saying I love the way you reframed it is you didn't look at it as an operational decision. Yeah. You looked at it, and I think you've read it in the book, the the GPP. That's it. Yeah. You took that and said this is systems and structure. This is policy. This is operational standards. You didn't say it was just it was just well, we we negotiated a new deal. You saw it as a means by which the organization can be restructured using policy, which is brilliant.

And it comes back to the ecosystem because you're making a policy decision for an ecosystem. Yep. Yep. So I've seen a lot of these kind of nuances playing out, in different, aspects in this landscape, which I call the space ecosystem, which is what I wanted to share today. I mean, even right now where I am sitting, you know, the very first thing that I had to do was to relook at the strategy because that's like the rudder in your ship. You know, it gives you direction.

Mhmm. It allows you to steer in specific direction. So without it, you're just aimlessly just floating in the ocean. So the strategy is your departure point for the organization. And I don't think a lot of organization actually play pay, due attention to strategy. And I'll come back to why I say that. And I've I'd like to hear that because I, I would I'm gonna probably frame it differently, but let me hear I'd love to hear how you frame it. Yeah. So there's different aspects around strategy.

And I think I started off playing to win versus playing not to lose. If you're playing to win, strategy is key. Okay? And every other aspect of the organization hinges off your strategy, by the way. Whether it's your systems, your processes, your structure, It all comes to fruition because of the kind of strategy you put on the table and the strategy that you want to pursue. And if you think, of your organization as in a boat race. Let's assume you're in a sailboat race.

And there's different scenarios you could look at. Okay. So, for example, right now in co during COVID 19, we had a lot of organizations shut down. So what happens if you're in a sailboat race and the wind dies? What do organizations do? Most organizations just stop and say, there's nothing else we can do. Just wait for the wind to pick up and then we carry on. But there's some organizations that say, hang on. Let's get this boat ready.

That when that wind picks up, our boat is in ship ship shape condition. We have taken all the mask out of the bottom of the boat. Everything is well greased and oiled, and we're ready to go. And it's those organizations that plan during that particular phase when nothing is happening, when it seems like nothing is happening, plan for when the wind picks up actually are the winners.

And by the way, if you think of strategies that are put together at a national level when you're in a recession, you will notice that even in South Africa right now, our president is pushing quite hard for investments in infrastructure. Mhmm. Because that's what countries do. They invest in infrastructure so that when the wind picks up, when there's an upturn in the economy, your economy is ready to go. Those are the strategies you use when it seems like the wind has died down.

And it's you're perfectly in my opinion, this is just my opinion. You and I are talking. In my opinion, you're perfectly correct. I would add, And I think it's written about, but it's I will add that the majority of plants that I see when I'm out, worked in over 50 countries, all over the world, lived in Hong Kong, lived in Luxembourg, lived in the US, They're not really plans. Yeah. They are not they don't take the desired outcome.

They don't hit on the the strategy, the macro tactics, the tactics, all terminology that value would understand at this point. I'm not gonna go into all the details, but they're really not a plan. I'll give you an example, and I won't name the country because I'm trying to talk with them right now. But the head of digitalization of a major country in Europe asked a company to create a plan.

Yeah. And they came back with a 170 pages of a plan that it was almost as if you they did every single thing that needed to happen in the entire world, and it was not a plan that anybody could follow. There were no there were no tactics that you could take a hold of. So most plans that I read are not truly plans. And the second part that I love is exactly what you and I were talking about just before we made the call is we are setting up infrastructure.

It's this need to put in place the systems and structure of the GPP. And I apologize. I'm gonna say it here because someone might ask later, what does that mean? It means the Goldsmith productivity principle. I didn't name it. Somebody else named it. There's a there's a TED talk in Luxembourg. You could watch where that name came up. But the the systems and structure need to be put in place. And before you and I started, do you remember what I said we put in place?

Yeah. JPMorgan took us on as a private banking client. And in doing so, we have set up we're setting up infrastructure. And even so, when the guy when he sent I said, what's our ACH number? What's our wire number? And he sent them over, and I said, no. No. No. No. We need more. And he said, what do you mean? I said, I want the ability to get for us every currency in the world. Yeah. And he said, what what do you mean?

I said, well, let's say we're talking to a wealthy individual that wants to get involved with Project Moon Hut, the foundation of the corporations we're building, and they happen to be sitting in Europe. They don't want to use their euros or their dollars because JP accepts the dollars. We want them to be able to send, Swiss francs Yeah. And not have to do an FX, a conversion of the cost of FX back again when we wanna buy something in Europe.

Yeah. And so what he did, first time he's ever done this, is he went through and grabbed every single code for us for every currency in the world. And now when someone will ask us for later, they'll ask us, how can we send it? We'll send our ACH or wire information, but behind it will be every single currency that we can accept. Right. And that could not be done when you're busy busier. So you're perfectly I mean, what you just said, spot on. I love what you're saying here.

And then I wanna give you 2 other scenarios, by the way. Sure. The the one is, I think it's a common mistake that we make is that when we're putting together strategies for, let's say, an organization in this case, we kind of look at the environment and we say, okay. Who's the leader in this environment? And very often, we try to emulate the leader. It it can come down to a me too strategy Mhmm. Following, essentially.

But if you think about it, David, if you're, again, in the boat race, right, if you are second to the leader, you're both racing under the same wind conditions. And if your boats are equally matched and if you are, racing, there's no way you're gonna overtake this leader if you're having the same strategy. That's a brilliant analogy or example. That's brilliant. Yeah. It makes perfect sense. And because you're you're gonna be following exactly what they're doing.

However, you're axe you're actually gonna be in a different wind condition potentially. So you could be following what they're doing, but they're for their condition, and you are not for your condition. So even that's wrong. That's that's a great example. Yeah. And so, by the way, the only way to beat the front runner is to take a different strategy. Yep. In the hope that you actually get ahead. Because if you take the same strategy, you're gonna just be level.

Okay. You're you're a 100% right, at least my opinion. Sorry. I'm not the I'm not the end all of all answers, but I agree with you. Yeah. But but, also, if you are the front runner, it pays to look behind you to see what the other guys are doing. That's stay. Yeah. Yeah. That's competitive intelligence. Yeah. Exactly. And by the way Have you gotten to that chapter yet? Yes. I'm I'm I'm really, I let, like I said, quite amazed at what you put down in terms of how you think because yeah.

I'm not sure if you're a Formula 1 fan, but this is exactly the strategy they use in terms of tire management. So you could use different compounds of tire. You got a soft compound, a medium, and a half. Right? The guy who's running second will not emulate let's say the guy who's in the front, and if he stops and changes his tire, the guy who's running second is not gonna use the same tire. He will choose a different compound.

And, likewise, the guy who's leading the race, if the guy was second who changes his tire, he's gonna match him so he can stay ahead. Yeah. So this strategy is quite powerful. But, again, like I said, I know this Are you a you're obviously a fan of racing. Yeah. Is there an individual who's responsible with binoculars or something, is there a person responsible to try to figure out what tire that other company that other, group is using? Oh, yes. Absolutely.

There's a competitive intelligence component of it, which somebody is watching multiple different pits to figure out which each one is doing, and then he's feeding back or she is feeding back the person. Sorry. The person is feeding back the data so that that pit crew can make its ultimate final decision. Yes. By the way, there's a whole big data, team behind each and every of these teams.

So if you're watching Formula 1, you will see Amazon Web Services providing analytics to say, this guy is gonna catch up with that guy in in lap 21 or lap 10. And then, you know, each and every moving part of the the car is there's actually data attached to it, which they then stream back, and there's all sorts of decisions being made. And even the strategy can either win you the race or or you lose the race based on the stretch.

All I can say is my my first time on a racetrack with friends, I was in the center because they had a car, and I was standing there and I saw this pit car. The what is it? The, not the pace car, but the the starting car. What's the first car that goes around that that starts the race? Well, in Formula 1, there's no No. But in in Formula 1, there's not. But in another race, what happened was this car drives up, and I can tell this is the guy who starts the race.

So I went out when the the, there was a person in the car with him, she got out. I walked over, and I started to talk to him over the hood of the car. And he at one point, he says, oh my god. Oh, we've gotta go. You wanna go? Hop in. So my first day, first time ever at the races when I was a kid, I was in the pace car. That's the name. I was in the pace car. My my first people said I've been coming here for 30 years. I've never been in a car, and you've been in a pace car.

So, yes. I I I didn't realize sorry. There was a a on the side is I didn't realize how I never thought about it. That's another thing. I've never thought about how much data analytics goes into the actual on race day decision making. Yeah. It it's amazing. And then, you know, there's there's a book called The Blue Ocean Strategy. I'm sure you must have read about it. But, normally, when organizations look at the environment, they look at it what in what is called the the red ocean.

So it's effectively trying to boil the red ocean. So you're doing similar things to other organizations, whereas the blue ocean says take a completely different approach, and I think your book talks about it. Yes. Relook at it. Redefine it. Look at it from different angles, and be different in a way. And I think that's what strategy is all about, and there's an art, and it's a process itself. So so I don't know if you planned on hitting it. What I'd love to hear and can we transfer back in time?

Don't give me today's observation of it. What was, not just the over to the top level, but what was the, a little bit more of the details of what this new plan you were creating that took you 6 months. That plan, not today's version of that plan. What was that what did that plan say? You know what I'm asking? In terms of how those actually framed in the end? Well, yeah, you said you took you 6 months to come up with. I think it was 6 months. I didn't add the months, but you said by December.

You had a plan. So my question is, what did you do in that plan that was so new and so creative or so innovative or did something differently? What was in that? Uh-uh. As I said, we took what is called a user requirements approach. So we took So that that's that's top. Yeah. What did you do inside of that is my question. So so, effectively, what I did was to take those inputs, and I collated them. Okay? And then I said, hang on.

Let's see if we can cluster these guys, these responses, essentially. And when we started to do that, there were 3 clusters that came out. Okay. The one was saying that we need to look at, you know, these PACE products and and services, essentially, looking at it from an environmental resources management perspective. So we manage need to manage our resources, our oceans, our forestry, you know, the water resources. Can we look at our weather planning and so?

So there's a whole string of different user requirements under environmental resources management. The second was saying there's disasters. So let's look at disaster safety and security. And if you go and look under that, you know, cross border risk, moving of assets across the the the country, you know, making sure that the assets are secured, looking at waterborne diseases as an example from a health perspective.

Yeah. So there's a whole plethora of different elements, positioning and timing for, say, as a safety point of view, as an example. Then the third one was innovation and economic growth. Looking at it from an industry perspective, the spinouts, spin ins. You you talked about all the different, innovations that came from the space ecosystem, essentially. So we wanted to emulate that aspect of the innovation, value chain. So so that was the 3 clustering, essentially.

And then we said if that is our that the agency has to respond, how do we set up the agency to actually respond to that? And I think this is where the ecosystem my initial thinking of the ecosystem sort of stemmed up. And I think I'm gonna come back to that a little later on because if you read our national space strategy. When I talk about space ecosystem, you will see that reflected in that particular strategy. Okay. But I think over the year, we've got nuanced and strengthened in a way.

I I appreciate it. You you know what I'm asking, and I think you know me well enough after 2 and hour and a half hours is that I'm I'm I like to dig down because often the missing my my wife was the person who did this for me, and I'll share this just as an an aside. As I used to say to say, well, I give a definition of something, and then you give an example of it. So I would say, well, a cup is something you could drink water out of. And my wife one day sat me down and said, no. No.

No. No. No. A cup is a certain type of material that's shaped into a form that can hold a liquid. It can come in all different types of mediums. An example of using a cup is so you could drink out of it. And so what often happens when there's an a description of something, you get the example, but not really the definition of it.

And what you're really trying to accomplish in this this little set here by breaking it down into the clusters or this the product lines is another layer of me understanding how you were approaching it. And you approached it. The first one you brought up was environmental. Yep. And then the second one was disaster safety and security. 3rd was innovation economic growth.

So it was interesting because I think if we were to talk to individuals in the, beyond Earth ecosystem, they will then they will start off with innovations and economic growth. That's right. Yes. They they start with not the first one that really is being the use case. For example Yeah. The firefighter, the glasses, the exercise equipment, the baby food, those that I used earlier, this freeze dried food. They would start off with the other one and thinking, that's not why you do this.

Yeah. And so it was interesting the order that you even gave it. So I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was primarily because of what government was doing, in the day with regards to that, and that was our departure point, essentially. But the last element that we put in innovation and economic growth was exactly to the point you're making, not to miss it. Yeah. No. It's and I can hear it. That's what I'm listening to your words and the the process in which you're delivering them.

And in doing excuse me. And in doing so, you can you can get an understanding of how you have approached challenges. And I've gotta say so far, I'm I'm completely impressed with your approach to the things that we've already discussed. I'm I'm sitting here saying, okay. How could this be reused, amplified, redefined for project Moon Hut? Our Yeah. And our directive is to improve how we live on earth for all species. So how do we amplify the Mearth ecosystem?

How do we how do we redefine terminology or to get the right individuals engaged in our project? So these were these are so far brilliant, observations. So thank you. Yeah. Great. So when we're talking, when we look at institutional level, we talk about strategic, developing the strategy, but we talk about strategic planning. So the one is the strategy formulation, but the other one is the the actual implementation of that.

So the strategic planning or the strategy aspect is, you know, how do we look at this new terminology, not problem statement, but the challenge? And then look at it from how do we wanna see ourselves in the next maybe 5 or 10 years? And what are the key goals and objectives that we wanna put down for this particular organization? And that's the strategic aspect. But the planning aspect is how do you look at it from an analytical process point of view and translate that strategy into action?

And I think in your book, you talk about not project management, but management of projects. You you looked at 2 limiting you to 2 projects per person. Let me explain. The reason that we the term project management always comes up, but that's an activity within. When you're leading, when you're in the role of overseeing, you have a different challenge. It's which projects to work on, and that's managing projects.

So you might have 40 projects going on within your organization, which are priorities, which are not, which could be eliminated, which don't. In each one of them, there's project management. How do we make this project work? So, yes, that's the distinction there. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Project management is a philosophy, which I think you would yep. Mhmm. From a process point of view.

And what I would like is when I look at strategic planning, you develop your strategy and then you start planning into the organization. And, effectively, what you're doing is you're cascading your goals and your objectives at a strategy level into the performance contracting to back into the organization. And I quite like the filtering that you said. That's limited at an individual level to not more than 2 projects per person.

And you give different scenarios, you know, fully capacitated and shared and and also outsourced as well. But those those different sort of options that you have in terms of how you bring all of this together, inside the organization. And I've seen this now starting to work in where I am exactly right now because Perfect. Great. You directly in terms of business remodeling, looking at the policies and processes, looking at our systems.

I'm gonna come back to the Goldberg, productivity principle, which is what I quite like. And by the way, if you want to with your team that you're doing this work, if you wanna share what I sent you Yeah. Yes. Definitely. Do. Please do. This is, there there's the the age of infinite is about infinite possibilities and infinite resources. It it's not to make a a few rand on a book. So Yeah. Please share it with your team because then you can have a similar conversation across the ecosystem.

Right. Yeah. Okay. So just so you know, I'm I'm giving you permission right now. Share it with your team. Let them know they can use it. Let them know because it'll help you not to have to articulate the same message. You're starting from the same point of reference. Great. No. Thanks for that, David. I certainly will do that. So we're talking about strategic planning. You said sorry. You said look at policy. Yeah. Sorry. What did I You said let's look at policy.

Yes. Policy. Now I'm gonna come back to that aspect, because I'm gonna look at the ecosystem. So let's look at the strategic planning and why we actually do strategic planning. You know, the you either want to reinvent the organization through continuous improvement. So you gotta see the organization moving forward on a continual basis. So Mhmm. That's not quite strategic planning. It's just incremental improvement. Mhmm. But you also want to address maybe a specific challenge as you put it.

Not a problem, but a challenge. Okay? Then you also do what is called mission driven need or an agenda addressing a specific mission. And project Moon Hut is exactly that. It's a specific mission that you want to engage in, and you put a strategic plan in terms of how that is gonna come to fruition. And then you can also manage strategic change. You know, we're living in a fast rapid paced, environment. Technology is changing over the hour, essentially.

How do we keep track, and how do we make sure that we're right up there in the cutting edge of that particular change aspect? So you can use strategic planning for very different, aspects of the challenges in the organization, including increasing revenue and all of the things that we look for in terms of the boss bottom line. But, effectively, what we have to do is ask the tough question.

And I think one of the things that I quite like is, this issue around why why we exist, the purpose of the organization. And, you know, you have to challenge the status quo. It's not just accepting what you if you come in as as an executive into an organization, you just don't walk in, sit down, and carry on as business as usual. You gotta challenge the status quo.

Because very often, you'd find out that the organization is the way it is because, you know, executives have been sort of moving in a particular, let's say, footpath, it's very difficult for them to get off track and look at things very differently. So your job as as an executive when you're paid to think is to challenge the status quo. So you have to reflect and respond to the environment within which we operate, but also looking at it, as I said, how do you beat the competition?

Not by following, but by looking at different strategic options. And this is where now when you bring that strategic planning aspect is you develop that road map in terms of, how you move forward. And what I figured out over the years and as I said, one of the when I was given this task and I asked the executive responsible for strategy and planning, what is the process?

I started to look at this, and your book actually articulates and frames it exactly how I've learned this whole art of strategy development. It's it's it's a process, essentially. You know, you looked at your current reality, and there's very different tools that you want to could use in terms of your current reality. But you also wanna look into the future, that shared vision. Now when you're looking at the current reality, obviously, you can do a SWOT analysis or this PESTLE analysis.

But, essentially, what you're doing is you're taking stock of the present, the you know, where you are at the moment. And you can do all sorts of audit, you know, studies and surveys. You can do, you know, referencing and research and so on. But when you're looking at the, you know, the the future is you're looking at that shared vision, but you define the values, the benefits, the the value proposition at the the endpoint is that here's my vision.

When I get to that, achieving that vision, this is what it would look like. And in between, you're doing a gap analysis, essentially. You're defining identifying the critical issues between where you are at the moment and where you need to be. And that's when you develop your goals and your plans. That's your strategic aspect. That's the element, the process that takes you from where you are to where you need to be.

And that the detailed implementation plan actually kicks off, as an offshoot of that exercise. And I kinda figured this out, you know, just by trial and error. I didn't you know, you can do an MBA. It's not clearly defined in terms of processes and tools. You can do a SWOT analysis and so on, but how this whole thing fits together, it's actually an art, that that kind of feeds into, the process.

What I want to do is maybe right now, in terms of that processing, and then just to recap very quickly, you know, in terms of the strategy, and I gave you the example of the national space strategy, looked at it from a user needs perspective, understanding what sort of services those particular needs, you know, users would require. And that helps you to define the market.

And then when you're setting up, like, your agency or your institution, you look at it from a governance and management perspective. And then you have to look at the coordination aspect. How do you bring all of these different elements together? And this is where the ecosystem now starts creeping. And you can even look at international corporation in that perspective because, you know, if you're looking at the space ecosystem, it's not just limited to a national level. It's a global value chain.

And this is where international corporation, space 4.0 ex is an example. 3.04.0 talks about international corporation and industry. Can you can you please was I first time I've heard space 3.0. First time I've heard 4.0. Can you define what they are? So if you go back into the history of, space, okay, it went through different successive phases, essentially. So we talk about space 0 version 0. This is astronomy, by the way. Pure astronomy. Okay. Okay. And then I love that you went that far back.

I was not anticipating. So, like, where does he talk about it? He says, okay. We we've gone back, back, back. Right back to the original. I I I Nanaaran Prasad, when I asked him a question on the podcast, it was a brilliant answer. He says, well, let's start with gunpowder. It's like, what?

And he took all it took the it took me all the way back to China and the development of gunpowder and how rockets were sent from ship to shore with mail on them so that the they wouldn't have to take a boat and have to moor and then boat in and give the mail and go back. So the rocketry improved from ship to shore using gunpowder, and and and it was brilliant. So I I love that you started with astronomy. That's the first thing I thought about, and I'm assuming you've at least heard of Nan Iran.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we start with astronomy. Go ahead. Yeah. And then the space 1.0, and I think you know about the space race trying to get to low earth orbit, essentially. So and and satellites into low earth orbit. But then you go to space 2.0, that's when you see the space exploration coming in, you know, the, planetary missions coming in. So that's the that's the version 2.0.

Okay. Version 3.0 is when we see, you know, the MERS space station, and then you have the International Space Station. Now you're seeing international collaboration coming in. K? That's version 3. And it's still there. It hasn't moved up. But what you see more of right now is version 4.0, which is industry. So even NASA, for example, is outsourcing to the industry, and we're seeing many space agency doing that, opening up.

And the ecosystem is now open up for the industry to be more integrated into the ecosystem. So we're now into version 4.6. It's interesting that you didn't mention when you went over these, especially at 3 point o and even in the 4 point o. I've, the the context of the outcomes from the industry these players in each one, because I'm reading websites today of major players, and they will say in there, we are about the safety and security of the United States.

Yeah. We are about the this this this of our country. Yeah. And it, to me, is the antithesis of what we are about. I mean, we we are about bringing the world together in one entire project that will help move everything forward so we could find commonality and not the divisiveness we're finding even today through a variety of other experiences we're all, involved in. And where in this whole the industry outsourcing do we find that people actually really care about making everybody better?

Like, this age of infinite we talk about, is is that 5 point o? I you know? So, David, it as you're talking, it struck me, by the way. I've been following you you might know there's the James Webb Telescope that's been launched. Right? Yeah. Okay. So it was a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, ESA.

Now if you follow the public announcements that are being made, it's quite funny because what I see is that NASA has done a, b, and c. And on the other side, it's ESA has done c, d, e, and f. NASA has done g, h, and I. ESA has done I don't see a joint Exactly. NASA has done this and this. I I see the sort of competitive spirit between NASA and ESA.

And yet if you were to really think about this whole beyond Earth ecosystem, and the reason for it is in our minds, the way we play it is we are about bringing the participation across all ecosystems. And we we do not say we are working with x and y because of their country affiliation or their references to a specific type of organization such as the European Space Agency.

We are about individuals and organizations helping us to achieve the desired outcome of improving life on earth for all species. And that's really why you and I started talking is that I saw, at least for the interview, because there have been people who get turned down for interviews, that you had a more holistic view. Yours, I think you recall, and I'm not trying to pick on you, you were very much Africa, and I said know the world. Yeah. And that's because that's what we're about is the world.

So I I I agree with you. I see it's not a collaboration. It's you do one thing, I do another. You do one thing, I do another. Yeah. But yet the mission success of the mission was because of both the contributions. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. So where does where does we improve the rest of the universe or at least our, the the world? Is that 5 point o? Yeah. Is that in your mind, if you were to to to say, David, we're in 4, 5 is really where we come together.

Yeah. Okay. Because I'm gonna use that now just so you know, but we're gonna we're gonna not gonna call it space 4 point o. We're gonna call it beyond Earth 4 point o, and it's gonna be 5.0. So 5 point o is Mearth. Yes. We sent it here. I wanna draw a small caution, David. Sure. I'm I'm I'm playing with you a little bit, but I'm I'm trying to play this out in my head. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I very often heard, with all the geopolitics that's happening around the world.

Yep. You look at the bilateral level, country x is not working well with country y and all sorts of concerns. And then you have statements as but look how things are working out in space. You know? Yes. There's many countries working on this particular initiative, and and this is a good model because, you know, when we get to Mars, we're gonna crack those kind of problems or tensions that we have at a geopolitical level. It's not gonna exist in Mars.

That's why I I hope you're laughing very hard when you say that. Yeah. I I don't know. The the challenges that you have on Earth has to be tackled, dear enough. So so the way maybe this is might be useful for you to understand a little bit about what when when people hear about project MoonUp, one of the questions sometimes comes up is, are you going to, are you going to, have peace on earth for all mankind? Yeah. And I say to them, no. It's not on our agenda. And they look at me kinda strange.

And they say to them, look. You put 2 heterosexual men, a heterosexual woman on an island, deserted island. Are you gonna have peace? And people will laugh. And just the other day, someone said, well, 2 heterosexual women on an island would not have peace. And you look at marriages, which are just 2 people we don't have peace. Yeah. So that's not our initiative. However, I'd like you to do an extrapolation from here to the future. Yeah. Let's take our 6 mega challenges.

Climate change, I'm not gonna go into the details. You and I have gone over a little bit. Climate change, mass extinction, ecosystem collapse, which is full ecosystems completely falling apart. We've already had them on Earth. Then there's displacement, political, economic, religious, you name it. Then there is unrest. Again, political, economic, religious, you could name the list. There's a long list of them.

And the last one is explosive impact, things such as overfishing, the coral reefs dying, the rainforest disappearing, all of those. My take, this is our plan because we have a 45 year plan, is that in about 7 to 10 years, and this is inclusive of the the doomsday cliff. I forgot what it's called. The cliff down in South and, Antarctica.

When these pressures start to put conflict on the world, individuals will start start to ask new questions, and then they're going to say, who out there is solving this? And we hope, that's our plan, to be ready to say, globally work with us. Yeah. That's that's our that's there this has already been thought through, but that doomsday cliff, what is it called? The doomsday glacier. When that drops, it won't raise the sea level because it's really the glacier behind it that does a lot of that.

Yeah. But once you start seeing Indonesia, Philippines, the Maldives, you see the coastal waters of China, the the greater bay happens to be when you and I grew up, it was the Pearl River Delta in China. Right. You look at the e the coast of the United States, you can go down through Europe and look at Scandinavia. These water just water alone will cause individuals to say, what's the new solution out there?

And we're hoping Yeah. That's our plan to be ready for that, to address these type of challenges. I don't think humanity is ready today to get over the geopolitics. I think there's just so much there's so many challenges there. I'm gonna keep my mouth closed. I I was gonna bring this aspect a little later on. Okay. Okay. Sorry. No. No. But I think it'll be useful just to put it on the table. I've picked this up even inside the organization I'm at the moment at that sense of the space agency.

One of the things that I picked up is we talk about missions. So we have what is called a mission driven focus. So we have a satellite that's gonna be launched or we're gonna put a new ground station. So these are specific missions. Okay? So the organization is mission driven. So we have these good big mega projects that we're looking at. And then we have values led. So the values that we articulate for the organization is there to ensure that we achieve those missions as a collective. K?

So it's mission driven, values led. And then I said, hang on. This needs to be turned on its head, actually. Mhmm. It actually should be values driven, mission led. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think if you take that approach, you're gonna start to crack a lot of I'm not saying all, a lot of these global issues. Even if the NASA is a example that I gave you, it's mission driven. The values come second. Right?

But if you put the values in front and you said and NASA and ESA sat down and said, what are our values that we collectively agree as NASA and ESA, and how do we communicate around that? What you're seeing right now and how the communicating would be completely different. Absolutely. Which which is mind boggling if you think about it for a moment. Yeah. It's there are stories out there about how by sending a satellite, we're gonna improve these 6 mega challenges over time.

No. Yeah. Our directive is to improve life on earth for all species. That's it. One of the mechanisms we are using is Mearth. 1 of and beyond earth. One of the tools we're using is on earth tech transfer. One of the tools on earth we are using, and there's a series of them. That's part of the plan. But it's not you don't hear this, and they, you know I'm not a space person. Yes. Exactly. So I don't I I'm kind of baffled at how this is kind of, in my mind, glossed over.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do this. We're gonna set up the telescope. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do this, and it will help Earth. Yeah. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Rewind that for a moment. So Yeah. You're absolutely right. So how do you fix that in your mind? Well, this is how you reframe now the the organizational culture, essentially. You know, what is central to the values of the organization? And then the mission gets added on to that, essentially.

And so, by the way, if you look at it from what's happening globally, when investors are looking into organizations, you know, you you you probably come across the ESG, the economic, social, and the governance aspect. Yeah. Okay. It's values driven. You you're stepping into muddy water with me on this one, but go ahead.

Let me hear what you've Because if you take a values driven approach, it's it's not only looking at it from the internal to the organization only, but what is the external value that you're creating? You talk about project moon art. You know, how do we improve the life on earth as an example. It's values driven. Okay? Project moon art is secondary to the fact of what you're trying to achieve. It's improving the quality of life.

So Mhmm. So when we look at how do we take care of the environment, how do we look at the social impact that we're making, it's values driven. Even when you're looking at your customer focus, it's values driven. The customer doesn't care of the particular mission. It doesn't care how you got the data. It doesn't care how you what ground segment you have. All they want is that data on their laptop or their handheld cell phone, the mobile app, or what have you. That's all they care about.

And if you as an organization can look at it from the value stream perspective, how do you do that ethically and morally? I think it's complete because many organizations focus on the mission rather than saying let's focus on the downstream, the customers. So And the governance aspect. There's one video you watched. We called it the moon hop mission. It was that word mission, I hate. Sorry. It was because somebody on the team kept on using the word mission, and I put it in there.

But we actually call it the Muna Project because it is a project. It's just one piece of everything we're working on. And Yep. The the question that I have then is how do you not just writing it on a piece of paper and telling people that's supposed to be the the value that we, that we defend and we work towards. How have you done it, or how would you suggest organizations do it when it comes to the beyond Earth ecosystem? Okay. So when you You know what I'm asking. Right?

Yeah. No. I I know exactly what you're asking. Alright. So, there's a structured approach, and you you talked about the the, you know, the strategy, and then you're kind of looking at it from the, you know, the performing aspects, the forecasting, the learning aspects. So in my framing, I looked at it from a strategy point of view, then you gotta look at your business model and structure. Then you look at your processes, your systems, and then rewards and recognition for yourself.

But an aspect that's truly in cup encompassing all of that is the culture of the organization. Now what we try to do, we actually started this exercise about 8 months ago. We're going through what is called a change management process in terms of relooking at the culture of the organization. And, by the way, if you wanna change the culture of the organization, the trick to doing it is by taking each and every individual on that change management journey.

Mhmm. Each and every so if you wanna change the organization, you gotta change the behavior of each and every individual. And, by the way, I should also mention, you could have the most fantastic goals on earth, and you can try to implement it. But, ultimately, the success of that strategy is based on the collective behavior of your organization. And that comes to each and every individual playing their part in the organization.

So when we look to change management, we use the particular model called ADCA. I'm not sure if you're aware of it. But first of all, you've gotta create the awareness for change. So you articulate the strategy essentially, and then you say to the organization, to get onto this bandwagon, on this strategy, this new direction, this organization cannot it cannot be business as usual. K? Because if we do, we're gonna fall off the bandwagon. So you cannot maintain the status quo.

You cannot do more of the same. You cannot just resolve your current issues and think that things will be different. So you're gonna start to relook at the organization. And so the first one is to create the awareness. You've got a new strategy. You make them aware that there's a need to change. The second element in the is called the desire. We need the each and every individual to ensure that they have a desire to change. If there's no desire to change, nobody's gonna change.

And there's processes, by the way. There's a the the ADCOM model is a is a is a process driven approach. Each and every individual has to be engaged in this process. So you create the desire, the case for knowledge. So now you give each and every individual the tools in terms of how do I change? What do I need to do to change? And there's a whole suite of tools that we you know, neuroleadership, positive thinking, reinforcing, and those kind of positive thinking.

It's it's quite interesting, in terms of how your thought patterns could influence. I mean, we just did a neural leadership. Actually, I think it was in November. And just by the way, I need to give you this example. There's a set of twins. I think this is the case in the US. The the father happens to be a mass murderer, unfortunately. So he's on death row. A few years down the line, they go and look at these 2 the set of twins. So the one is also turned out to be just like he's dead.

And the question that was posed to him is why did you choose this mom? And his response was because of my dad. Then they looked for the other twin twin, and they found him. And he was living in a small town. So the first did the first twin the both of them knew of their dad? Yeah. Both of them knew of the dad. Okay. Yep. They found the second twin, and he was in the little village, and he had just won the father of the year, happily married with kids.

The question posed to him was, how did you turn out to be like this? And his response was exactly the same as the first because of my dad. Mhmm. The first one says I just emulate what my father did. The second one says I refuse to do what my father did. Mhmm. The power, the choice is in your hand. So even in the work environment, you can make a decision as to which way you want to go. There's a whole lot of thinking around neuroleadership in in terms of reinforcing positive thinking.

And you're gonna take each and every individual, through that journey in terms of what how do you reinforce positive thinking? And it's It's it's a move. I I love how simplistic you've made it. Yeah. Yet at the same easy. Well, it it's there's a you've worked around the world. There's a difference in my mind for someone who speaks around the world and someone who works around the world. A lot of individuals will speak, so they say, oh, I've worked in this country. No. You didn't.

You went to a building. A bunch of people met at the building. You spoke and you left, and you went on a tour. That's not working in the country. Yeah. There's a big difference culturally about perceptions and and messaging, if I was to it's not as clear as I'd like it to say, but it's that it's not a ubiquitous. It's not a universal understanding of how cultures work.

And I'm gonna give you probably the most shocking or eye opening, and I hate to use the term eye opening, but it's what I'm gonna say, of an example that really it was one of my first real takes on how different we we can see the world. And I was with my first friend I ever made in Hong Kong, lived there for 10 years. And as of COVID, things have changed. And I remember sitting down with her in in her living room in our dining table.

And I looked at her and I said, how do you give a police report? And what I was really asking was how do you see the people that you when you view them? And the answer was shocking in my mind because you've already heard, I'm assuming, people have said, we all look the same. Yeah. And we say we don't look the same. Well, guess what her reaction was? Just take a wild guess was the first thing that she talked about. I've already given you the clue.

She said and this might not be a universal construct. It's hers, so let's just take it as hers. She said, the first thing I would say to the police officer is one eyelid, 2 eyelids, or no eyelids. Woah. That micro detail was the first thing. Yeah. Then she said the bridge of the nose. Then she said the shape of the face. And I'm sitting there because that is not a more of a I'm gonna let let me just use America because I grew up in America. Blonde hair, blue eyed, such and such.

It's a different orientation. And she made comments about the differences between one eyelid, 2 eyelids, and 0 eyelids. There's actually in culture, in her culture, one of them is not very good. Okay. And their hair, if you went back 40 years ago or hair in Asia tends to be black. Yeah. So that's not a distinguishing characteristic.

My point, getting back to this what people see or what they believe, is to change an organization as to also understand that each different message is interpreted so differently in every culture, in every situation, and it could be how tall you were when you grew up, how short you were when you grew up. It could be how how many years you went to university. It could be, did you grow up with 1 parent or 2? Were you economically advantaged? Were you not? I mean, the the list is endless.

So it's it's you made it very simple, and I'm trying to say that I I also appreciate the complexity of this. Is that okay when I added? No. David, I think what you just put on the table, I've seen this play out and my different experiences across the world. I I I would do you know the saying? Let me ask you. Do you know the saying? If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down. I have heard it. Yes. Why did you why have you heard that?

Because it's not in the culture that I've lived in. No. Not in my culture as well. So It was I I had a business in South Africa, and we had we were in Cape Town. And during the last really challenging drought, I remember showing up, and they said we can't flush the toilets. Oh, yeah. It was and they and they said, and they they had water drainage off the roofs off the rooftop, so it went into a bin, and there was a bucket next to the toilet.

And if it's yellow, let it mellow, and everybody used the same toilet. But when it was brown, you flushed it down, but you also used the water from the drainage system. Right. You would you would not understand that if you probably lived in Bali. Well, not even that. I mean, I live in South Africa, but in Pretoria, we didn't have a drought. Oh, okay. So so as we were as we were, getting the aroma of the of the you didn't even know what was going on. But that that's where I learned that.

I learned that in, while I was down in South Africa in, Cape Town working. Yeah. Yeah. No. But I fully agree on the on the on the culture shock, aspect. I've seen that many, many times. But but just coming back to your question, it's it's we're using a specific framework for for change management in the organization. Okay. And by the way, it's a process that's taking 2 years. It's not a switch of the button. It's a a long and tedious process. That much I can say. Okay. You know, it is.

And it and it it's an ongoing process. It's like raising ongoing process. It's raising children. You don't stop raising your children to some degree. Yeah. So So I talk about the knowledge, but the the the other a is the the ability the ability to change. Do you have the ability as an individual to change, as a team, as an organization? And then the last r is reinforcement. So you gotta keep reinforcing, the change elements that you've you've walked through already.

How do you hire in your case, how do you hire for the ability to change? Yeah. That's a very, very good question, David. And I think we've actually really looked at our recruitment process altogether. So when we're doing, going through a recruitment process, apart from just looking at it from a, you know, just an interview process, essentially, you you get a candidate or different candidates, and you pose a whole series of questions to them.

But now we we, ensure that they go through a barrage of different tests. And, also, the culture fit is is one of the tests that we put them through as well, to make sure that there's, some tests that are done to see if there's a fit. And the you know, we have a consultant on hand who actually does all of these for us. And very often, you know, we get it right, but sometimes we get it wrong, unfortunately. And it's never an exact, science.

It's No. No. No. It's there's no button on the back you can press, we said. You know, let's try this again. It's Exactly. You're on your team, is it primarily South Africans? Primarily, yes, but not all of them are South Africans. Primarily, yes. But we do have, foreign nationals working at the, the agency as well. In fact, we Now because this is not this is not a normal question someone would probably possibly ask. Foreign national to me to you could be Botswana, Zambia.

You know, they don't have to be all over the world. So when you if you looked at, let's say, how many of your team are from the continent of Africa? Let's say, probably, 2, 3%, maybe. And so our team is is not big. It's, just over 200. It's about 204. So out of 204 people, how many of them are from South Africa, and how many are outside of South Africa? Okay. I can't give you the exact stats now, but I'm say around about a 194, 5 would be South African.

Okay. So that's when you said 2 or 3, I it kind of what do you mean 2 or 3? So, yes, it is a so it makes it easier for you to be able to create this culture change because like the like my friend Hazel, you tend to see the world with certain equal perspectives, not generally equal across the world, but in in terms of a a bandwidth, it's a standard deviation is closer than it would be otherwise. I'll I'll I'll caution against that. Okay. We're not a monoculture in South Africa.

I think you probably experienced that. Yeah. So the the Africaners, the there's a whole there's 5 different version, 5 or 6 different types. 11 African languages. Yep. And then there's Indians, and you get different ethnicity around that, and then there's coloreds as well. Yeah. So And then there's mix that I feel is mix. Right? When you put them together, it's very dynamic, but you also have your own own challenges. But diversity is very good Okay.

Because you bring different perspectives to the table, which is what I wanted to talk about in the ecosystems with PlanetScale. Go ahead. Yeah. So I just it just coming back to your question. We're talking about values driven, mission led, and how do you bring an organization to embrace the values of the organization and then push through the mission aspect. So there's a whole change management model that we use to to bring each and every individual, staff member on board.

So I just wanted to share that aspect. Yep. Appreciate it. And and maybe, I think we we're getting to the 3rd element, this the ecosystems approach. Okay. When you think about it very carefully, if you look at governments across the world, there there are 2 or 3 priorities that any good government would be pushing at a national level. So one is ensuring there's economic growth. K. Stimulate the economy. And that's goes hand in glove with what we call wealth creation for for the nation.

The second one is improving the quality of life. And you wanna do that when you're making policies around these different aspects, the the social and economic. We talk about the socioeconomic, challenges of, of a country. You need to balance that against the sustainability issues, environmental sustainability, and so on. So if you look at any particular decision that you need to make irrespective, you can give me any particular, you know, decision that needs to be made.

You can frame it in 1 of 3 boxes. It's either has to deal with economic issue, social issue, or an environmental issue. It might have elements or different elements embedded in it, so it could not maybe, not just fit neatly in one of those boxes, but it could have different elements.

So when you're looking at it from an ecosystems point of view, you know, you you're gonna look at as I said when I started off, when we talk about ecosystems, we we're looking at it from a a natural, you know, biological, ecosystem or communities interacting whether it's animals and plants. So we talk about so the word ecosystems come from ecological systems, essentially. And I think there's some really neat aspects around when you're observing these kind of ecological systems.

One of them is if you look at the ecosystem, you have diversity. So diversity is an asset. So the ecosystem is defined by these different elements, but, you know, you're talking about different organisms. And they is an interdependence, and there's a complexity around how they come together. But inside of that ecosystem, you also have road differentiation. You know, different elements have different functions in inside this ecosystem.

But when you put them together, it defines this the system itself. Now one of the important things around the ecosystems is what we call the economies of scale. And and I know this is an economics term, but it's the performance of the ecosystem is overall greater than the sum of its individual elements.

So if you take each and every element within this ecosystem and if you add up their contribution, if you look at it from a systems level, at a systems level, the contribution is greater than the sum of the individual contribution. Mhmm. And I'm gonna come back and just show you how they link up back to, let's say, human made systems or policy systems. And then there's an element of self organization, by the way, inside these natural ecosystems. There's a dynamic balancing.

You know, you have these stability and sustainability, and there's flexibility in terms of how all of these different organisms come together. They organize around each other. But there's also elements of cocreation. There's development parts leading to succession and coevolution inside this ecosystem. And then you also look at mutual beneficiation, mutual benefits. Those symbiotic sort of relationships and partnerships inside the ecosystem.

Now these are kind of observations and characteristics of the ecological systems. Right? Now when you look at it from, you know, even at a national level, we talk about national systems of innovation. The elements that I just spoke about just now in the ecological systems is actually found inside this kind of system that we try to create because that's exactly what we're trying to emulate inside these human made systems.

Because as I said, there's 3 aspects that the drivers for the system is either it's social, economic, or environmental. And it might be a subset of maybe 2 or more of these things. But you have a driver for the system itself, And and and we're gonna talk about space ecosystems just now. But you can reduce any decision making, or decision that you need to make in one of those three areas. Okay. So those are the main tenets of these sort of human driven systems.

So even if you take project Moonhunt, there's a there's an element. You wanna bring the social good back. So there's a social subsystems. There's economic subsystems. There's innovation. You wanna bring the industry in. You wanna look at growth potentials, you know, capacity to produce new goods and services through innovations by using the moon as a base. There's also environmental issues that you'll be looking at. How do you extract natural resources and bring them back as an example?

So you can take any particular decision or project, and you can deconstruct it and you can put in one of these three boxes. One of the things that I picked up is when you're looking at a systems, and we talk about national systems of innovation. And, effectively, what that means is you create this multitude of institutions inside of your national landscape.

But your system is defined not by those nodes, institutional nodes inside of the national system, but the interlinkages and the interactions between those different institutions. Mhmm. That's what defines the ecosystem. And that's where we get a lot of the aspects wrong. So even, for example, one of the things that we are still battling, and I know it's not peculiar to South Africa, by the way. Many nations do have this particular problem. We set up this different institution in this landscape.

But when we do institutional planning, we do it at an institutional level. We do not do it at a system level. This is a systematic problem even in South Africa. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Yes. It's everywhere. Yeah. And by the way, when you're looking at, strategic planning at an institutional level, you gotta take away the unit of analysis being just the the institution itself.

But looking at it from the ecosystem point of view, how do I optimize the institution within the broader ecosystem? And you talked about, you know, the enterprise thinking, and you talked about the 50,000 foot viewpoint. Yep. This is exactly what it is. When you get to the enterprise, you think, at that level. The 50,000 view foot viewpoint is your ecosystem that you're looking at. Yes. And it's interesting because paid to think was written at a time before.

It took 10 years, 10 years to write, something like that. It was written before I got involved in Beyond Earth. And now you'll hear me if you ever hear this phrase. I say the 297,000 mile perspective. Okay. And that is the Mearth line. It is 297,000 miles because the earth is elliptical in wave flows, and there's a distance between it, but we're including outside on the other side of the moon as part of the Mearth ecosystem.

So, yes, the 50,000 foot view is the perspective where you raise up above everything else and you could see everything happening instead of being down in the weeds or the old saying is you can't see the forest from the trees because you're so into it. Exactly. Yeah. And and that viewpoint is essentially looking at it at an ecosystem point of view and understanding the ecosystem. And, so you gotta understand the sort of drivers. What are you trying to change in the ecosystem?

Is it the social progress? Are you looking at economic stability or or growth? Are you looking at environmental stewardship? Those are the drivers that you wanna push, in different institutions, essentially. But you also need to understand the driver interfaces, you know, which is the balancing between these different drivers and the tension points between these different drive. So you could have multiple stakeholders, but each one have a different interest.

It could be a social aspect, the economic, or environmental aspect. But how do you bring all of that together and optimize and balance between those different interest and tension points? Obviously, you're not gonna make everybody happy, but how do you optimize it? That most people are happy. The way So here's a here's a, a challenge that I run into all the time is how do I say this properly?

An individual has a talent or a propensity or a belief structure that has gotten to them to where they are at the moment that they're there. I and I'm gonna take it a jump. I hate what people say. You can't do that. Well, the only reason I'm sitting in front of you is because I did that. So you're telling me I can't do it, but that's why I'm here. So how do you tell me not to do something that has gotten me where I am?

Yeah. So my point is you have somebody who's had a propensity, a belief, a structure, IA, whatever it may be, that got them to the point in which they are brilliant or as good as you'd like them to be at that moment. Yeah. The question then is, if you have a 45 year plan, when do you stop them or change them to fit the new paradigm? Because if you do so too early Mhmm. They will not perform in the way in which is needed. So let me give you an example, and then maybe you can come back with it.

Our our our small project totals, the the four phase of the moon hut is 1,600,000,000,000. The new transport system is 6 is 90,000,000,000. The next system we have on and on and on, it's a little shy of 2,000,000,000,000 across the board. Some of the people we are bringing on are very much into making money. Yeah. But they understand as part of their roles, contracts, negotiations, leveraging assets, economics around the world, being able to find capital. That's what drives them.

If you take that up from underneath them, their their premise for living, if you and that's not a maybe that's a wrong way to say it. Their their their skill set that got them there, we won't be able to achieve our desired outcome. So, therefore, how do you know and this is part of mine. How do you keep the culture where it needs to be? You keep the directive where it needs to be, but you have to let a great skater be a great skater.

You have to let a Ronaldo play the way he is, but you then have to kinda mold them to your environment. How do you manage that? And I think do you understand what I'm saying? No. I understand exactly. It's it's a and when you have a 45 year plan, part of my plan is is in 10 years, we'll change them. You know? Not now because that's how they're good. In 10 years, they'll evolve. But right now, that would be the worst thing to do because that's what made that physicist brilliant. They're arrogant.

They're stubborn. And as you say, in the beginning, they come up with ideas that are radically different, and you want that. Yeah. So how do you approach that? You know, David, I think it it comes back to leadership. So, by the way, every time I engage with the industry, I learn something new. I never enter a conversation assuming that I know everything. Okay. So this open mindedness in terms of listening and trying to drop some of these linkages when you're listening to experts.

How does that fit into the ecosystem? So as you rightfully put, each one is on their own individual journey inside this ecosystem. So we talked about the values driven and the mission led. But under the mission led, you bring in different expertise, whether it's mathematicians or scientists or engineers. But you're gonna bring you know, you're gonna pick the cream of the crop, essentially, to come through and to drive those specific missions.

And, you gotta find a natural home for them in in terms of how they fit into this particular institutional landscape. As much as you're pushing those particular values, you've gotta give them the opportunity to grow. So just to give you an example, a few months ago, we had a technician, wire up a piece of equipment wrongly. Blew it up. Cost about $40,000. Now one of the things we could have done is this is a no no. Sorry. This is not acceptable. There's the door. We didn't do that.

We we we wrote it off to a learning experience. Okay? So the culture of the organization must also create the ability or the room for individuals to be innovative as well and bring their own creative in a spirit as well. Because different things drive different people. Engineers are driven because they want us to see something work. Give them that space.

So the leadership is gonna be very important in terms of how open minded you are in terms of allowing that particular growth, allowing, failures to happen. And I know in some cultures, failures are known. When you fail, you close the project up. I've worked in those cultures, and it's challenging. Yeah. And it comes back to leadership in terms of how you view growth of the the organization. And, safe to say, instead of Senza, we've we've taken radical approaches.

We've got new recruits coming in and saying, hang on. This thing's not gonna work. Can we look at it this way? Of course. Let's try it. Show us. Demonstrate to us. And it works. We've seen some really phenomenal stuff coming out with new colleagues coming with new ideas, new blood. But we find a way of fitting them into the narrative.

And I think when you talk about managing projects, how the leadership sort of cascades down and making sure that everything sort of also cascades up in terms of the delivery of the strategy. And I think that's very key in terms of ensuring the alignment. And I wanna come back to this point. Okay. Yep. No worries. I wanna come back to this point. Let me let me touch touch on it this this way.

When you looking at, changing the organization and and by the way, I'm probably talking about the last, point now is transforming the space ecosystem. Okay. And I will wanna come back to 4 in a moment, but let's let's get this. Go ahead. Transforming the space ecosystem. Okay. So so let let me give you a few insights in terms of what I've observed, in my own institutional landscape. Okay?

One of the things that I picked up is that when the organization was set up, there was a big operational focus. You bring in different institutions. You're clumping them together, and they're all coming with a strong operational focus. And what actually happened is you built your entire enterprise architecture around the enter, around the operations of the organization. Mhmm. So your operations actually drove the enterprise architecture.

K. The problem with that is that you get stuck in a rut because you don't have much flexibility. And we said, hang on. That that cannot be. That's not a business model. Because I said to the colleagues, you know, hang on. We're a small organization. We're about 200 people. If you look at the major institutions, like your NESOs and your ESOs and your CNESOs, you're talking about thousands of people. K?

But how is it that there's so much of innovation and, you know, growth in those particular organizations because they have to deal with legacy systems. So it can't be that operations is driving your enterprise. It's a strategy that must drive your enterprise. K? Now I think you spoke about the goals with productivity principle. And I and I when I looked at this, you know, I kinda smiled, by the way. I it kills me, but it's the only thing that I've ever read.

That's it was somebody else named it after me, so I I That was yeah. Go ahead. Because when when you when I read it, and I actually think that's it was one of your videos that you you shared with me, and I thought to myself, hang on. This is absolutely correct. I've seen it play out over and over again because we invest so much of time on our people issues. But, actually, if you don't get your systems right, you're screwed.

So just just to read, 80% of the results in an organization come from the systems and structure in place, not the people. The people are not the most important part of an organization. And then you gotta watch the video to understand it. Again, it's on TED, but it's the the the reason I'm bringing it up is it's it really is that powerful. And I'm I I even believe it's close to 90%, but no one's gonna believe me until they start to it's like watching the matrix.

When Neo is in that, and I won't give away, but when Neo finally makes that major change, if you haven't seen it yet, that's a big issue. But, that's a challenge. It is where you realize everything you've learned might not be right. Yes. And that's amazing, isn't it? You got you're sitting there. It's the only it's a a typical book is 30 to 50,000 words. A big book is a 100. This is 297,000 words.

Yeah. And in the one the out of the whole book, that's the only thing people bring up almost every time. No. No. No. That can't be. You're like, you're picking 3 pages out of 700 and some odd pages. But it is. It's that true. It is that true. Yeah. It it does resonate. I I've picked it up because you can have the best engineers, scientists in the world working for your organization. But how do you bring them together? And it's your systems. Mhmm. It's your processes.

Yep. And, you know, right now, we're actually going through that process of relooking at our systems. You know? We've we've looked at the enterprise architecture. We've gone cloud computing. We're looking at analytics, business analytics, things that we never considered 2, 3 years ago. But it was an eye opener because when I was reading that particular chapter and look looking at your video, and it's like, this is exactly what we're doing, because it's a glue that brings the people together.

If you do it wrong, everything falls apart. If you do it right, everything moves forward. So it's that it's that important in the structure. Now we do say as part of the this principle is that the people who design the systems and structure Yeah. In this one context are extremely important. They're not more important than the engineer. They're not more important than the architect. But because the architect does a different service.

But the leadership who designs systems and structure at this point is unbelievably valuable because if they don't know how to do it, you end up with organizations with bad culture, you organizations that struggle, organization that have all sorts of challenges over and over and over again. And so, yes, it's a it's a yeah.

Now in your book, you gave a a quite a good example of you know, you you talk about the one company where, you know, this individual said to you, you know, our systems are not working, but we still have to deliver. Yes. And you said the management go and fix your systems. So I was like, okay. Yeah. The the the in that example, they were the management was saying these people were not delivering. They weren't prioritizing in in in a little bit of research.

It didn't take much, can come to find out that their systems break all the time. And no matter if it broke or not, the management still expected the same returns. And I they hired me to do all sorts of work, and I went back and I said, it's a simple fix. Yep. Your computer systems are terrible, and your they'll you'll never be able to get over it without solving that. And that was the the kind of emphasis.

I I, I wanna go back, and then we come back here again because the one thing I wanna hear from you is your definition, and I'm gonna call it beyond earth in the you call it space, but the beyond earth ecosystem. Right. What's your definition of it? What do you see? What's what's your take on the world? Take it any way you'd like. Mhmm. So you mean the definition of beyond Earth? No. No. No. The this ecosystem.

You called it the space ecosystem, and I'm saying, remember, to me, space is a geog is not an industry. It is a geography. So, therefore, it's not space. It is a geography. It's just where you pick in the universe that you're choosing. So when you talk what is the industry this ecosystem like? What is it like on planet Earth? What do you see happening now?

Where do you see from your perspective, your eyes, going back to that analogy, as a in your role, in your country, and what you're trying to accomplish? What do you see when you look out at the ecosystem? And I and please be as blatantly honest as you can. Okay. So when when I talk about the the space ecosystem, okay, there there's 3 different let's say 4 different levels that we look at it from. The first or the top layer is the wire aspect or what I call the thematic areas.

So just to give you a sense, ultimately, what you want to achieve in the space ecosystems is to produce products or services or new in inventions, which could be products in themselves. So those particular products services can be categorized into different domains. Okay? So you could look at remote sensing or earth observation, and these are satellites that are normally in low earth or or orbit. Then you have telecommunications.

And a lot of in fact, the biggest chunk, maybe space exploration is probably exceeding that at the moment. But, I think when you're looking at applications on earth, telecommunications is by far one of the biggest, segments of the global space value chain. Then you have navigation position and timing. And then the 4th one is space exploration. So the space ecosystem includes the MERT ecosystem. So you wait. So navigation you said 3. Navigation? No. So it's earth observation Oh, okay.

Telecommunications. And then the third one is navigation positioning and timing. So it's NPT. And then the 4th one is space exploration. Okay. Yeah. So the top tier is your thematic areas in terms of the products and services that you're trying to push out of this ecosystem. We're squeezing this ecosystem to produce products and services. And it's not products and services to be consumed inside of the space ecosystem alone. It's outside as well. It's a spin off.

Mhmm. We also look at spin ins as well. Okay. So that's by definition how I look at it from the top tier is the domestic areas, which includes beyond earth as well, if that answers the question. So when you look at from a political, economic let's just take those 2 because I could go further. From a political or an economic level or perspective, what do you see when you look out today?

So at the moment, if I look at beyond Earth in terms of the activities, I think we we only of the starting block. We we know we're close to talking about, a Mearth economy just yet. Okay. It's gonna happen. That much I know because there's quite a number of initiatives around the moon, Mars, and so on. But at the moment, it's more exploratory. Let's get a rover down. Let's investigate, whether there's moisture in the soil. What does the geology looks like?

And it's more the precursor missions to what's yet to come. Okay? And then as the, you know, technology defines your launch vehicles and that ability to get there much quicker, much easier, I think that's when, like, project moon art, We will see them taking traction. And I think you you need there's a lot of work from what I'm hearing already in the pipeline. Yes. We've got a ton. Yeah. Exactly. So all of that is coming to fruition, but it's in the pipeline, and it's gonna come up.

What what about the geopolitics that again, I'm only asking because of your role. If you weren't in the role, I wouldn't be asking this, but we've got, challenging positions globally as to where things are gonna be done, who's going to do them, who gets the benefit from them. Yeah. Countries were not you can't work with them. You can't work with these people. There's a lot of that. What's your political I don't know how much you could say, but Yeah. Yeah. What's your thoughts on this?

So just maybe to give you some insights, and you probably know this. So if you look at the UN treaties and conventions, and you look at the number of countries that have signed up or ratified the moon treaty, there's not many countries that have done so. And the question is, why haven't they done that? There's always this issue around, so what is the mutual benefits? When you look at the outer space treaty, you know, outer space is meant to be the province of all mankind.

So if nation x goes to the moon and there's some economic benefits, then it should both benefit all mankind. The question is, does that include economic benefits as well? So if you've spent a $1,000,000,000,000, so who should the economic benefits go to? Should it be the nation state that actually spent the $1,000,000,000,000 or all of mankind?

And, if you bring back mining resources or resources that are mined from, and now you're trying to influence national economies or global economies, sorry, who should that benefit? Those are the open ended questions that that hasn't been answered yet, and I think that's what's detracting us from moving towards a unified framework around the moon and and so on. And by the way, these these have been long standing issues. Oh, even in my short time involved in this Yeah. These are heated debates.

Yeah. They they're they're not universally understood. And in my small little thing that I'm doing here, I get 30 page documents that people write about how the world should be changed. I'm like, really? You spend all this time? What have you done about it? Well, I wrote the paper. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. I'm I'm congratulations. You wrote a paper. What are you doing about it? And it's it's not easy when you, I I have a lot of friends that are live in China.

I have a lot of friends that live in Russia. I have a lot of friends that live in Europe and in in Africa and in in South America and the and in Australia. I have people all over the world that I love and appreciate, and those individuals are great individuals. And this whole political overlay is often a challenge in my mind because to me, we are bringing every that's what we wanna do is bring everybody together.

It doesn't it it doesn't matter what border you have, what language you speak, how you were brought up. We're not we're not aiming towards government. That's not our that's not our macro tactic. Ours is to bring individuals from around the world to help us wherever they can. Yeah. Absolutely. By the way, I should mention this to you. There's a joint initiative between Russia and China Yes. On, sort of, I think it's also lunar mission. Yes. It is.

Yep. And just by the way, South Africa is part of the BRICS. There's all Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Mhmm. So we've been invited to express our interest in joining this. So this is what we're doing in the next week or 2, essentially. This is how does South Africa work in. Right? And it it's it's one world. Yeah. And it's it's it's part of how why we are not as visible. We're not looking to play that game. We want people from South Africa to be involved.

We want people from wherever their skill is that's a value to moving us forward. Yet if you look at those 6 6 mega challenges again and you look at what could happen with a 16 a 15 CMC level water rise or a 30 CMC level rise, but let's just take 15, which is 6 inches, the world will be a different place. And the pressures to be able to deliver solutions will not be as you'll be fighting a 1, you'll be fighting on 2 fronts. The front is, where do we take people? How do we take care of society?

And the other one is, where do we take them? Yeah. And our hope is with what we're doing is that someone will say, hey. You know, you ever hear about these these projects, we're not crazy people? They're the they're the people who've been using the right tire. Yeah. But but what you're doing, David, is breaking the rules or breaking the protocols. Yeah. And we're trying to that's in I've said this many times.

The the Beyonder of the ecosystem likes to pound their chest on all the things that they're working on. We appreciate that because we get to hear about it, but that's not who we are. We are keep your head down. Do the work. Let's just keep on working and find the right people who want to build. Yeah. And that's a different approach. So we've we've covered the space ecosystem, the trend is there anything else? This is fascinating.

Is there anything else based upon our conversations before that you you've are top of mind or something that you didn't bring up that you would love to have said something about? Yeah. Just to give you a quick perspective in terms of just completing this picture around the space ecosystem. So I I've I've looked at the products and services, in those 4 thematic areas. But you also have to look at it from the building blocks perspective. Okay?

So there's, there's also about, 4, maybe 5 building blocks. There's the human capital element. And so you gotta build warm bodies into the system. So you your mathematicians, your scientists, your engineers, your technicians, you gotta have, that capacity or capability to be able to deliver on those particular missions. Then you need to look at a robust industry. So you have to have a industry base. And I've talked about, space 4.0, which is essentially where we are at the moment.

It's a big industry footprint into the ecosystem. You've even seen billionaires across the world turning their attention to the space industry, and there's quite a few out there. And then you're gonna look at it from the infrastructure perspective. What infrastructure do I need to put down? Those are that is also a key building block. But an element which is what we're talking about is the international partnerships. Mhmm. You know?

Bringing in different international players that we could leverage on each other's cap capacity and even from an economics of scale point of view. How do we put our resources together to develop to deliver something that's much greater that we could deliver individually? You gotta look at the intellectual property aspects of the ecosystem. How do you manage that if you have different partners involved?

And I think those are the kind of tricky issues that this probably fueling some of the geopolitics at the moment, so the intellectual property issue, you know, you know, you have the ITAR and all of that, in terms of regulations. But then you get down to the maybe the third level is the functional activities. You define your products and services, then your building blocks, what's needed to give you effect to the ecosystem.

Daily, you know, grind in terms of what you actually do on a daily basis, as your mission requirements so you can take your project Moon Hut, for example. What's your mission requirements? What's the core? What's the purpose? What sort of technologies do I need to make this mission possible? What are the enabling technologies? Do I need to do further research and development? Do I need new technologies to be pushed into this value chain?

And once I get up and going, you know, launching and operating, mission operations, and then, obviously, the last aspect is coming back to the first tier, which is a product and services, which is what I call your space applications, building those applications, and then also your your products. But, some of the the higher level framing of that is including the space law and policy. And by the way, at the moment, I should mention this.

I'm working with some of the colleagues to to build what is called an African Space Policy Institute because that's something that's missing in the African landscape. When we're looking at it, how do we position the African space ecosystem within the global ecosystem? So this is where the ecosystems come in, typically. Yeah. And then you could look at the space ecosystem from a national point of view. So you could get different levels of the ecosystem as well.

And then the the the the other element that we we've spoken a lot is the strategy and the business models, at an institutional perspective. So when you take all of this together and you put it into an ecosystem sort of framing, how do all of these things come together? How do you get human capital in in how do you get the industry engaging into the value chain? What sort of infrastructure? Who's responsible for that?

You guys start looking at the interlinkages between these different players that I need to pull together into in the sandpit. And what is the role of the space agencies in itself? And I've seen many countries that assume that they're responsible for doing everything in the ecosystem, which is actually quite foolish. You have to differentiate between your role and the role of other role players.

Just some quick elements in terms of, you know, if you wanna make the ecosystem fully functional, you know, we very often and I think the problem or the challenge that you highlighted, David, in terms of what you gonna be doing different on project moon hunt. Very often, we tend to play the zero sum game. Now there's one winner and there's one loser. But I think what we are playing in an ecosystem is a multi sum game where everybody wins or everybody loses.

And that's what you're trying to do with project movement. Correct. Everybody walks away with a value of a future. Yes. And there's no sort of competitiveness against you know, we gotta beat country x, or we gotta beat country y. It's let's work together, as a collective. And I think I mentioned that your your success is determined by the collective behavior rather than the goals that you just articulate.

And then you are gonna drive a value system when you're when you're looking at that multi sum game. You know? Respect, trust and dignity, excellence, responsibility, teamwork, innovation, achievement, fairness. How do you bring all of those to play when you're bringing your team together? And that comes back to the, you know, the values and the the culture that we've spoken about earlier on. But, also, we talked about the systems, by the way. And come back to the system.

One of the reality checks is you could work with legacy systems. You do more of the same that you've done for the last 10 years and think that you can beat the crap. But, actually, that doesn't work because all you're doing is working harder. What you really need to do, and this is where systems really cut to the core, is work smarter. And by the way, there's this metamorphosis that happens, you know, with a caterpillar.

Yeah. Yep. It's working quite hard, and there's a metamorphosis that happens. It becomes a butterfly. Much more efficient, much more beautiful, working smarter. Well, that's a perspective of the butterfly. The caterpillar might have thought. You know, look at look at my legs. You know, I got a lot of legs. Yeah. So, you know, you gotta there's a perspective. You gotta be careful. Absolutely. You just insulted the caterpillars. Well, look. You can't become a butterfly without the caterpillar.

Right? So you gotta start somewhere, but you don't wanna stay a caterpillar all your life. Right? I I I I again, I'm you're stepping into what I don't know if a lawsuit's coming from some caterpillars. You just violated the you believe that caterpillars are inferior, that they become beautiful, but they're not. But they both serve a purpose at some point. But they yeah. They both serve a purpose. They both it's I I'm again, I'm joking with you.

It's one of those things that it's very difficult to be able to articulate what is that that's why when we were well, it's very difficult to articulate what is a better what is better. So some people think better is more economic growth, and yet we have seen that some of the happiest people on the planet have nothing. We have said, well, it's it's more community, but sometimes more community ends up with more conflict.

There is no one answer to everything, and that's why our final statement is to improve life on earth for all species. It is not to say which what is better life because we don't know that. But our objective is to improve life on earth for all species and climate change, mass extinction, resource, explosive impact, displacement, unrest, and, explosive, explosive god. I can't remember the word now. They those will influence what tomorrow will be. And when we look at that, the happiness index Yes.

When you're light and this is my take. This is just my opinion. If your life is looking at a TikToks at a screen and telling everybody how great you are, that's not we're designed for more. We're designed for more. And it's not to say that someone they're doing is bad, but maybe we need something else that's a little bit bigger to look for. And I think that the the we're working on that. Val, I've I've gotta say this is I I like all the interviews, brilliant. You were here. You were present.

I absolutely loved that. I do love the 2 and a half hours we had prior because we really got to know each other, and that's part of the value of this process. And I appreciate the connections you've given us so that we can bring other individuals into the fold, and they're gonna be doing podcast too. So you have been absolutely fan fabulous. So thank you. Right. Thank you. No. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. I really appreciate and enjoyed the conversation.

And I'm gonna send you $25 for all the advertising that you've done for paid the thing. Oh, okay. You know, I I I I have sent we have sent out so many books. We have sent out so many of the the free PDFs or the Kindle reader versions. Our real desire of writing that book for 12 year or for 10 years, was 12 years actually, was to just improve how we look at the world and how we can be better at what we are doing.

And I appreciate, once again, all of those comments because you're reaffirming that the work we did was valuable because it you don't get paid for 12 years. You make money, but that's not the value. So Yeah. I wanna I wanna thank you, and I I wanna thank everybody who's been listening to take for taking the time out of your day to listen in. I do hope that you too learn something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

The Project Moon Hut Foundation, you've heard many times today, which is fantastic is we're looking to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon, a home. That's what it stands for, a box of the roof and a door. We're not about colonization or settlement. Those are bad words all over the world.

So we wanna establish a home on the moon and then create this new Mearth ecosystem through the accelerated development of the, Mearth ecosystem that we will take those innovations, the paradigm shifting, the endeavors, and turn them back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. And thank you, Val. You are amazing. Is there one single best way that individuals who would like to can get a hold of you? Yes, David. So I can give you my email.

I I did mention to you that I'll be stepping down end of next month. You mentioned that to me on the 2 and a half hour call. You didn't mention to. So you are stepping down in next month. Yes. That's right. Yes. So I can give you my personal email. It's Val Munsami. So it's val [email protected]. Yahoo.com. So for me, if anybody's interested in connecting, I'd love to connect with you. You can reach me at [email protected]. You can connect with us at Twitter at at project moonhut.

Me personally at at goldsmith. We're on LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram. We do have Project Moon not there, and also mister David Goldsmith. So there's multiple ways you can get a hold of me if you're interested in talking. And that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening.