Category: Leadership

Payload Space Investor Summit 2024: Innovations, Challenges, and Opportunities in Space Technology

Posted on by Laurie Scott

The Payload Space Investor Summit brought together thought leaders, innovators, and industry pioneers to discuss the evolving space technology landscape. From reusable rockets transforming the cost structure of space travel to the growing influence of defense priorities on space exploration, the event highlighted key trends, challenges, and opportunities. Discussions ranged from the bottleneck in launch availability to the rapid advancements in satellite manufacturing, all against the backdrop of increasing global competition and innovation.

With industry giants, emerging startups, and government representatives in attendance, the summit emphasized the need for collaboration and ingenuity to navigate this rapidly shifting frontier. Below are the key takeaways and themes that defined the summit.

Transformative Industry Trends

Cost reduction in space travel has reached unprecedented levels, thanks to reusable rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and the upcoming Starship. Marginal costs have plummeted, enabling a new era of accessibility. Advancements in satellite technology have also revolutionized the sector, with smaller, more capable satellites produced faster and at a fraction of historical costs. These innovations are changing the economics of space and enabling more ambitious projects than ever before.

Challenges in Launch Supply

A recurring theme at the summit was the industry’s struggle in launch availability. SpaceX’s schedules are booked years in advance, leaving a vacuum for other players to fill. Companies like Rocket Lab, Firefly, and Stoke were highlighted as emerging alternatives, leveraging innovative technologies and expanding capacities to meet the growing demand for reliable and accessible launches.

Emerging Players and Investments

The Payload Summit also spotlighted companies and individuals driving innovation:

  • Rocket Lab is establishing itself as a key player, with over 400 vacancies and a valuation of $9 billion.
  • Apex Innovations in LA is redefining bus manufacturing with customizable, rapid production cycles.
  • Other startups to watch include Sceye (balloon technology) and Varda (orbital infrastructure), both of which are developing cutting-edge technologies to address new space demands.

These companies, alongside government and private sector partnerships, are transforming the space industry with forward-thinking investments and groundbreaking ideas.

Key Takeaways for Investors and Stakeholders

The Payload Summit underscored several critical themes for those navigating the industry:

  • Reusability and Modular Systems: Scalable, reusable technologies are key to reducing costs and increasing accessibility.
  • Government Spending being used as a Guidepost: Monitoring defense and space budgets reveals substantial opportunities for startups and innovators.
  • Leveraging of AI and Data: Advanced AI applications, including remote sensing and satellite data analytics, are driving the next wave of innovation.

Holiday Hiring, do it right!

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

Desperate to get new hires in place for September?

Currently running a hiring process that is lengthy due to vacations and holidays?

Keen to make sure that the summer doesn’t cause too much disruption?

Hiring throughout the holidays can take on average 1.5 – 2 x as long. Consequently, it is really important to organise a recruitment timeline before starting a process. Check if and when Candidates and Hiring Managers are away and manage everybody’s expectations. Recruiting across the summer, can be a seamless and efficient process. It is ALL about the preparation, organisation and management of expectations.

Timing is everything! Don’t start a hiring process unless you know you can finish it. Before starting a recruitment process, block out times to review profiles, conduct interviews, and present offers for all stakeholders involved. 95% of hiring processes that are planned well end in successful recruitment. Furthermore, Candidates who know what to expect in a hiring process, feel much happier and comfortable and you will see the best of them in interview.

Make sure everyone is agreed on budget, job title, location, benefits, region, team size etc before embarking on a recruitment process. Are HR, Legal, Finance and Hiring Managers all in agreement? On working with global companies, we have found that sometimes external departments can slow a process down, if they are not kept up to date at the start of a process. Agreeing on a salary, even if there is a broad range, means that at the end of a process offers can be given quickly.

It is crucial to be mindful of the candidate experience, and communicate well.To represent your organisation in the best light, remember that candidates are people, and you will come across brilliantly if they are kept up to date and not left with radio silence. “People don’t remember what you did, they remember how you made them feel…” recruitment is no different. Let all Candidates know when interviews are booked for, and keep them updated on how long it will take to give them a decision. It’s ok to tell Candidates it will be a week long wait due to holiday absence. That’s far better than having them guessing. 99% of Candidates understand that a recruitment process takes time and are happy to be patient if they are given good timelines. 100% of Candidates will remain flexible if they are waiting for weeks without an update.

Can you have flexibility with interview scheduling?

If people are away, to keep the process moving forwards, move the interview order around! If a key stakeholder in the hiring process is away on vacation, get all the other interviews completed in the interim time. Then they can be slotted in at the end of the process. If we are asking Candidates to be flexible during the holidays, then companies should also showcase this quality too. It demonstrates good willing and proves that you are a good place to work. What is more important… securing top talent or being ridged in an interview process? Candidates are much more likely to be flexible if the organisation itself reflects that.

Look at combining and shortening the hiring process.

Candidates that have shorter interview processes are statistically less likely to suffer from interview fatigue and therefore more likely to accept the role. Good recruitment processes are not always made up of many long interviews. Three is the magic number! It is far better to have 3 strong interviews than 5 mediocre ones and leaves companies in a stronger place.

Prebook interview times out so that everyone knows when interviews will take place.

Especially if it’s a face to face interview.Hiring Managers, Senior Leaders and HR have very busy diaries. It can be really hard to get interviews booked in with everyone, especially over the holidays. Before starting a process identify times when interviews can happen and put placeholders in the diary to protect them. This will make booking interviews in later much easier. Adding structure to an interview process and proactively protecting time to interview your prospective employees may feel like a big ask, when time is precious but it can make all the difference to a successful outcome.

Get ahead with references so they don’t delay you.

Make sure your Candidate has got referee’s ready to go. Ensure you have their contact details and reference forms ready for them to complete. Take references while you are wating for security checks, or for contracts to be signed. Remember referees go on holiday too, so have some back-ups during vacations times.There’s nothing worse for a Candidate who is excited to start with your company having to wait weeks for a reference to come through, make sure that you aren’t waiting for them to come back, by requesting as early as possible.

Be prepared that resignations may not happen quickly – particularly if a Hiring Manager is away.

Over Holiday seasons, while candidates are often eager to resign, depending on company policy, they may not be able to if their own manager is on annual leave. This means you may not get a resignation and indeed a start date as quickly as you would like. Check how a Candidate has to resign when you make them an offer and what will be required of them.

Get aligned on start dates ASAP!

Notice periods are not only a legal requirement, but also very important. Exceptional talent cannot simply walk away from their current roles. Work with Candidates to agree on a start date that works for everyone and understand that compromise may be required. From the first interview, start to clarify when a realistic start date will be. Some candidates have 3 – 6 month notice periods, and this is not abnormal. Therefore, don’t expect that your outstanding candidate is going to be with you in a few weeks! (Even though that would be nice!)

The holidays come around each year, and at neuco we firmly believe that holiday hiring does not need to be stressful. Following a few thought through processes can help you to secure top talent when you need it.

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

You can’t be what you can’t see

Posted on by John Clifton

Joining Tegan Valeny and Jake Sparkes for episode 51 of The Tech That Connects Us was Kate Wendelboe.

Kate has had a fascinating career and held senior, influential roles at BT, such as Director of Media & Broadcast and sits on the Board for Rise – a group for Women in Broadcast.

We delved into how Rise is helping address issues of diversity and inclusion, as well as a few other questions around inclusive teams and fitting in, here’s what Kate had to say.

How are Rise helping address issues of diversity and inclusion?  

“One of the best things we do with Rise is making sure that there’s that pipeline of talent coming up. Because that is it; it’s educating children from the youngest of ages, about the opportunities that are out there for them to open their minds up to industries like media broadcast and cyber security. 

With Rise we have a whole series of programmes where we’re looking at the pipeline, all the way from school, up to supporting professionals who are decades into their careers. Our Rise Up programme goes into school and we get kit and link it to some of the science curricula and talk about how images appear on screens. Then we get them to set up a studio in their classroom, so it’s a hands-on experience. Then in the afternoon, they film a game show which brings the whole thing to life for them. 

We’re then finding ways to keep in touch with them as they progress through the education system. We’ve set up a mentoring scheme for people who are at university, we’ve then got a second scheme for people who are early in their career and then networking events throughout to promote the network and to allow people to feel supported.”

So how can we make our teams more inclusive? 

“We’ve just had a brilliant series of events at BT about race, diversity and inclusion, and it’s something that we’re talking a lot about internally. You can have diversity but without inclusion, it’s important to make sure there’s representation. So we’re making sure that we have enough of different groups represented. So that everybody in the team can look around and see somebody who is a bit like them in some ways. And that very much helps in gender inclusivity and makes diversity sustainable. 

‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ 

This all comes back to culture it’s so important that we create a culture where these things can be discussed, and myths can be dispelled and people limiting beliefs about themselves can be worked through and dispelled as much as possible.”

What would your advice be to someone worried about fitting into the industry or concerned about being different? 

“Make sure that you’ve found as many different people as you can within the industry, to make sure you’re getting lots of different perspectives and find somebody that you can trust to talk to. It may be easier said than done but those conversations that you can have when you find somebody you can be open with will help you dispel some of the myths.”

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

How COVID is shifting typical hierarchal structures.

Posted on by John Clifton

On episode 32 of The Tech That Connects Us Podcast John Clifton and Tegan Lloyd Williams interviewed Nancy Goldberg, Chief Marketing & Sales Officer, Nagravision.  

From professional rock climbing and snowboarding to the EVP of Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at the Kudelski Group and Nagravision, Nancy has walked a very different path to most people in her position and one part of the interviewed that really stood out for us was how Nancy and Nagravision adapted their leadership style over the past 12 months.  

As a leader, how have you had to adapt your style over the last sort of 12 months or so? 

“I would say these last 12 months it’s been really tough, but incredibly helpful at the same time. It’s really pushed us in a way that we weren’t necessarily super comfortable with in the beginning, but it’s really opened our eyes and opened our ability to manage in a different way.  

I think one thing that we have been able to embrace over this last year is really looking at our entire employee base and shift away from the standard hierarchical structures, really empowering people across the entire organisation, with decision making, execution and what success even means.  

That is what has shifted for us in this organisation. This is a company that for many, many years was very hierarchical with our decision making; it was done from the top down. But when COVID hit we’re suddenly having to work in a completely different way, in completely different environment.  

Now, we have shifted into smaller teams all over the world. And all of these smaller teams can take on problems, resolve those problems, and push them back onto the organisation effectively. So that’s where I see where we’ve changed not only from a company perspective, but my own management style.”

What is the most positive outcome that has that has come out of this? 

“The most positive outcome, I believe out of this period has been camaraderie, collaboration and teamwork. Again, I think that as we have had to deal with the situation, and we are spread across 33 countries around the world with about 3,300 employees. We had to come together as ‘mini teams’ to resolve immediate problems and deal with time zone issues and deal with things in real time.  

For me the best thing that’s come out of this is this renewed sense of camaraderie of team spirit of collaboration. To me, that’s the biggest benefit that we have achieved over this period, or the biggest benefit from a very bad situation.”

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.   

The Importance of the ‘Permission to Have Downtime’

Posted on by John Clifton

One of our most passionate, enjoyable, and fun podcasts to date was with former EVP Human Resources, SES Networks, Dara McCann with her deep expertise in diversity and people.

John Clifton and Laurie Scott sat down with Dara and really learned some fantastic insights into her unique perspective on fostering an engaged and hard-working team while we’re increasingly virtual. Her advice on ‘permission to have downtime’ was especially resonated with us that we’ve shared it below:

“I think people must have permission to have downtime.” 

And I think people are concerned about their jobs in this environment, they are very keen to be seen to be doing all the right things and seen to be working hard. 

When people were going into an office, it was easy for a line manager to know, who’s doing hard work. It was superficially easy for people to see who was working hard and who wasn’t, who was in on time, and who was late. It was easier to have that little interaction that you could check “How are you getting on?”. 

Nowadays, people are relying on email and video to communicate. This leads some feeling like they have an obligation to be always ready for their camera.  

So, I think, in today’s world employers need to be a little bit more accepting of the fact that people are trying their best. People may be trying to school their children or trying to take care of people. 

As employers it’s important to give people permission to take a break, which is one way that we can improve their mental and physical health. 

But there can’t be a lip service where you simply say “Oh, of course, take the afternoon off” or “of course, go for a walk” and then secretly in your mind think: “I wonder if they’re actually doing any work?” when they’re back working. 

The challenge of today’s business environment is to be flexible and agile. Ensure you are connecting with your employees one on one, asking how they’re doing as it slows down a bit, but don’t forget that everything will get faster again soon enough. But it’s really that permission to take time out of the screen and really sort of recharge. 

And I think you need to look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and that a person’s psychological safety is just as important to them as their physical well-being.  

If an employee does not feel they can take time off without asking for permission, then there is a lack in the trust of that company, and it will most likely suffer from this deficiency. 

And so, you’ll find people with a lack of trust or demanding jobs often find themselves feeling guilty for taking time off. They know their boss or line manager wants that report or deadline and they don’t want to disappoint them, so it’s important that these relationships are built on trust as well. 

Leadership, people and dviersity are important topics that we cover on nearly every episode of our Podcast. So don’t hesitate to go through our podcast archives and listen to some of our fantastic conversations with business leaders and experts.

Lessons on Leadership from Lawo COO Jamie Dunn

Posted on by John Clifton

We recently interviewed Jamie Dunn, COO of Lawo pioneering IP-based video and audio technology company for broadcast production, on an episode in our weekly podcast The Tech That Connects Us.

John Clifton and Tegan Lloyd Williams discussed a wealth of insightful information from taking opportunities, lessons learned, the boom of audio, and his thoughts on leadership; which we thought was especially poignant during these strange times.

So we’ve shared our version of his thoughts on leadership and communication below:

There are many ways to be a good leader, but one thing I think is fundamental in these times is communication. 

I always thought that it was about reading a lot of books on leadership, but they were just talking about this difference between management and leadership.  

And I concluded myself after thinking about this is that leadership for me is just about personality. Leadership can’t be trained, it’s something ingrained in someone whether they have a good idea of what it means to lead people and know-how their actions are going affect others around them or not. 

Leadership is about belief. You have to give people the confidence that what they are doing matters, and you should be able to do this without face-to-face contact if your messages are strong enough; from my point of view empathy in messaging is key for producing effective leadership. 

Empathy is all about leadership as well, understanding that what people are going through and where they want to go can be very important. 

I always loved the leadership aspect of my work. As a leader, I can help guide and empower those around me to be their best selves while also being well-connected with them. One area where this is really apparent is communication – as someone who has built his career on great communications skills it’s paramount that all leaders are proactive about listening and understanding what people go through to communicate effectively. This way we can support others during difficult times or celebrate together when things get better! 

It’s not easy just to say, you must do this, you must do that. Because of safety and traveling restrictions we have lots of limitations for what used to be a walk in the park. This is not an easy task; however, it starts with listening and understanding what people need to make adjustments that will help them succeed any way possible. 

Understanding how our guests excel in their respective market’s is always a great talking point of our weekly Podcast The Tech That Connects Us, So don’t hesitate to go through our podcast archives and listen to some of our fantastic conversations with business leaders and experts.