Welcome to Star Compass!
What’s inside this week:
🧑🚀 This Week’s Mission: What is the importance of Day 1?
🌌 This Week in Space: Three things worth checking out this week.
🚀 Ask a Rocket Scientist: What is one space policy problem that we are not taking seriously?
🔭 Next Step: Handling early success.
THIS WEEK’S MISSION
What is the importance of Day 1?
My Amazon new employee orientation was held in a building called Day 1. The name was the first lesson.
In his first letter to shareholders after Amazon went public in 1997, Jeff Bezos said this is Day 1 for the internet, and if we execute well, for Amazon.com. He shared his ideas of a relentless focus on customers, creating long-term value over short-term corporate profit, and making many bold bets.
In his 2016 shareholder letter, he explained what Day 2 looked like. “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1,” wrote Bezos.
Whether it is your first job or your first day at a new job, you can adopt a Day 1 mentality.
The first 90 days let your employer see how you handle real work, not just the interview version of you. Everyone wants to start fast and make a good first impression. That outcome is more likely if you have a plan.
If not, you can form a bad first impression, creating a bias that is hard to overcome. An early positive perception creates momentum that accelerates your growth, opens doors to exciting projects, and fast-tracks promotions.
Ninety-day plans aimed at leaders in transition were popularized by the 2003 (and updated 2013) book by Michael Watkins entitled The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter #ad. But they are important for people in all stages of their careers.
I divide the first three months into distinct phases to initiate acceleration and avoid common career pitfalls.
Month 1 (Learn)
Month 2 (Collaborate)
Month 3 (Execute)
Breaking the start of a new job into these phases, I provide strategies I have used to initiate acceleration.
Month 1 Learn
Make a good first impression by showing up early, dressing slightly more formal than others in the office until calibrated, and bringing enthusiasm to every introduction.
As quickly as possible, finish your initial human resources paperwork (tax forms, direct deposit, benefits enrollment) and install necessary software to start fast. I have experienced delays or failed to complete these items immediately on a few jobs, slowing me down to a Day 2 pace.
Meet your manager, scheduling your first 1:1 to learn how they prefer to communicate and what success looks like in your first 90 days. Regular check-ins (ideally weekly to start) catch small problems before they become a bad pattern.
Asking a lot of questions, both strategic and tactical, will help you mitigate confusion. Try to find the answer yourself, but don’t wait too long to get help. Don’t let your ego keep you stuck for hours trying to look smart.
Listen for answers and read the team dynamics in a room. Teams operate in different ways, so understand where and how communication occurs. The sooner you learn the “operating system,” the quicker you will get integrated.
Take notes in a physical notebook. Write down key processes, definitions, and recurrent acronyms so you can find them easily and not have to ask twice. Build a glossary since every workplace has its own language. This will help you synthesize a coherent model and manage information overload.
Search for a guide. As we have learned, a Hero’s Journey is more successful with a mentor. As you meet the team, identify a senior engineer or expert who can help you navigate your new surroundings. Set 1:1s with them, as well as other people you work with.
Month 2 Collaborate
Identify opportunities for small wins. Show a willingness to do the mundane like updating documentation. This earns respect that nothing is “beneath you”.
Set up a simple tracking spreadsheet to log tasks, wins, challenges, and skills learned. Delivering small tasks builds trust faster than heroically tackling a massive project.
Demonstrate you are transitioning from learning to contributing. Communicate your progress to your manager with quick, written status updates.
Expand your network by connecting with all levels and all disciplines within your team to understand the big picture and how your work connects. Build relationships by asking them what you should know that is not obvious and who else you should meet.
Month 3 Execute
Take ownership of a small project from start to finish. Propose your own tasks. Demonstrate autonomy. Deliver results.
Begin to share thoughtful observations and ideas now that you have context after spending your first two months listening more than talking.
Find ways to fix a bottleneck or improve onboarding for those who will follow. Treat obstacles as problems you can help solve rather than complaints.
Compile a list of what you completed, the obstacles you overcame, and what you learned for review with your manager and mentor.
Learn to review and adjust your plans. Compare initial goals and adjust based on your improved understanding of the role.
The good habits you establish in the first 90 days don’t need to stop. Every day is Day 1, so avoid stasis by not getting too comfortable. Never stop learning.
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THIS WEEK IN SPACE
📡 OPPORTUNITY: As an international citizen, it can be difficult to work in aerospace in the US. The International Students and Professionals in Aerospace (ISPA) working group in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) can help. The AIAA ISPA mentorship program provides mentors who have successfully navigated this path. Apply before September 27th at 11:59 PM PT to receive mentoring.
📚RESOURCE: I have been fortunate to have Josh Hopkins on my team twice in my career at Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin. Not only is Josh an amazing engineer and program manager, but he also finds the most interesting historical references so old lessons learned don’t have to be relearned. The latest he shared is Don Wilhelms’ To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist’s History of Lunar Exploration. While the book is hard to find (Josh, of course, has a copy), the Lunar and Planetary Institute has put a PDF of the book online. It is good reading for anyone working on lunar missions today.
🌎 COMMUNITY: In two weeks, I will join the international space community attending the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Antalya, Türkiye.
Only 12 out of 76 IACs have been held in the Americas. The last one was in Washington, DC, in 2019. The AIAA is working to bring it to Houston in 2029.
Houston last hosted it in October 2002. Thanks to Gwynne Shotwell, I was lucky to attend SpaceX’s coming-out party at that event.
Who will be the next big thing if Houston hosts it again?
ASK A ROCKET SCIENTIST
What is one space policy problem that we are not taking seriously?
- A student in my CU EMEN 5065 Global Topics in Aerospace Class
Space policy problems getting today’s attention are:
orbital debris,
space weapons,
space traffic control,
satellite spectrum,
space imagery restrictions,
satellite reflectivity and signal interference affecting visual and radio astronomy,
reentries polluting the atmosphere,
expanding spaceports,
lunar resource and land claims, and
outer space heritage.
The space policy problem we are not taking seriously enough is the international cooperation void that the end of the International Space Station (ISS) program will create. The Artemis Accords are learning from the ISS success, but lunar plans to date are not as integrated in engineering or operation as the ISS.
The ISS was designed from the outset to be interdependent and rely on contributions from all participant nations to function. While this codependency could also be viewed as a flaw, it forced unprecedented cooperation across cultural differences and political intricacies to plan, coordinate, provide, and operate the ISS.
The ISS program integrates international flight crews and globally distributed launch, operations, training, engineering, communications networks, and scientific research communities in one of the most complex space projects ever built and operated. It is unlikely a similar project of its scale and ambition will be replicated anytime soon.
It may be the only practical way we travel to Mars.
Got a question about navigating your aerospace career? Reply and ask. I’ll answer the best ones right here.
THE NEXT STEP
The first 90 days will be a blur of learning, collaborating, and executing. If you effectively build trust by demonstrating value, you will soon get more tasks than you know how to complete.
The next issue will teach you how to balance your work and not become a victim of your success.
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