The Execution Factor: The One Skill that Drives Success

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Moon Shot

May 1961. The height of the Cold War. The previous month had been brutal for the United States. The Berlin Wall had gone up. The CIA-trained force leading the Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba to unseat Castro was unsuccessful. And NASA’s space program was failing as the Soviet Union’s cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to reach space and orbit the Earth.

President John F. Kennedy knew America needed a vision—something that would rally the nation, inflate its heart, and inspire dreams. He delivered. By the end of the decade, he told a joint session of Congress, our nation would put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth.

Less than a year later, in February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, ...