TIMnovate

How Astronomer Turned Lemons into Lemon Meringue

By Shlomo Maital  

        What do you do, when your struggling startup is hit with a public relations catastrophe?  

         You turn lemons into lemon meringue pie – with creativity and with humor.

         Alisha Gupta, reporting in the New York Times, noted how “on Friday, Astronomer — the technology company whose married chief executive was caught on video at a Coldplay concert canoodling with a human resources executive at the firm who is not his wife — capitalized on the heightened attention when it released a video response featuring Ms. Paltrow as a “temporary spokesperson.”

         The CEO resigned, and later, so did the female HR chief executive.  Bad publicity, right?

         Astronomer sought out a known and loved actor  Gwyneth Paltrow, ex-wife of Coldplay front man Chris Martin.  

          In her video, she states: “Astronomer has gotten a lot of questions over the last few days and they wanted me to answer the most common ones,” Ms. Paltrow says directly to camera in a video posted on Astronomer’s social channels.

         The first question then appears onscreen: “OMG! What the actual f&^%”

        “Yes!” she responds, a hint of knowing and exasperation in her voice. “Astronomer is the best place to run Apache Airflow.” She adds: “We’ve been thrilled so many people have a newfound interest in data workflow automation.”

         Gupta notes:  “Viewers were given a peek at what Astronomer actually does, a move that was quite clever, I must say,” said Michel Pham, a business professor and marketing strategy expert at Columbia Business School. For companies that abruptly find themselves embroiled in scandal, he explained, using humor to capitalize on the spotlight requires a deft touch.”  It does not always work. It can backfire – treating serious issues as amusing.

         But many many people now know about little Astronomer, who previously had no clue.  Astronomer turned lemons into lemon meringue pie.

         Humor is a powerful weapon for messaging.  Especially satirical humor. 

         Take, for instance, Tom Lehrer, the Jewish math prodigy whose musical satire amused – and strongly attacked the negative trends in US politics and society.  He has passed away, age 97.  Consider his “national brotherhood week” song – so relevant today, when MAGA vengeance and hatred led by Trump dominates the news daily.

                “Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, And the Catholics hate the Protestants!  And the Hindus hate the Muslims. And everybody hates the Jews!”  sang Lehrer, himself Jewish.  “Be nice to people who are inferior to you, it’s only for a week, so have no fear, Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year!”

                If only it lasted all year…or forever.  Rest in peace, Tom Lehrer. 

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Instructions for Living a Life

By Shlomo Maital  

         I found this short poem by poet Mary Oliver, in a New York Times article. The title is “Instructions for Living a Life”. 

         With that title, philosophers would tend to write six encyclopedias.  And indeed they have. 

         But poets?  Seven words.  Here they are:

          Pay attention.

          Be astonished.

           Tell about it.

      OK – here is a small example.  My wife and I are at a School Psychology conference, in a university town in Portugal, called Coimbro.  At our final event last night, we gathered around a 700-year-old rubber tree!  Still alive and vital, with latex dripping down its amazing huge trunk. 

    Astonishing.  And… I’m telling you about it.

Intelligent Failure

By Shlomo Maital

Amanda Anisimova

     Amanda Anisimova, a Russian-born American tennis player, lost the Wimbledon tennis final, 6-0, 6-0,  in under one hour, to #1 Iga Świątek.   It was a humiliating, decisive failure. 

    Writing in the New York Times, Rustin Dodd explained why Anisimova’s response was a “master class” in how to lose gracefully. Anisimova “graciously complimented her opponent, thanked the fans — and apologized, too — and then broke down as she praised her mother, who had nurtured and supported her after the sudden death of her father in 2019 and during an eight-month sabbatical from tennis that began in 2023.  “I know I didn’t have enough today, but I’m going to keep putting in the work,” Anisimova said, wiping tears from her cheek. “I always believe in myself so I hope to be back here again one day.” “

     Anisimova was a dark horse competitor whom nobody expected to make the final.  Swiatek dominated totally; with Anisimova losing without winning a single game, losing ALL her services, it should have been crushing and humiliating for Anisimova.  She has been through hardship, quit tennis for a while – and seems to have it all together now. 

         “I didn’t have enough today,”  she said.  But one day, she will.

         Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson[1] has written brilliantly on failure.  Businesses don’t fail enough, meaning, they don’t engage in “intelligent failure” – high risk innovations that also bring even higher possible returns if they work.  But failing often requires a learning strategy from failure – simply, to ask continually ‘why’,  and not ‘who’ – who is responsible leads to hiding error, a disaster.  ‘why’ leads to learning, repair, and progress.  This is the strategy used by leading militaries, in debriefing operations.  Why, not who…and what should be done as a result.

     Fail often. But only if you do so intelligently, by learning from each failure.  Edison’s thousand attempts to develop a filament for the light bulb are an example.  He said, later, each failure was a step toward ultimate success.

[1] A. Edmondson. “Strategies for Learning from Failure. Harvard Business Review April 2004