Why Your Moonshot Needs a Middle to Champion

A few months ago, I wrote about how we rarely innovate from scratch. NASA’s Artemis II program inspired the post—the mission was proof that the drive to explore never really left us; it just needed time to relaunch.

Leadership works the same way. Servant leadership, the Socratic method, walking meetings—most of what we call breakthrough thinking is really an established idea that found its moment in a new form or context.

If you’ve been following the news, Artemis just gave us another chapter in its story.

NASA announced the international crew for Artemis III: Their assignment won’t be landing on the moon. They’ll be using the Earth’s atmosphere for a dress rehearsal, or what NASA calls a docking mission.

More specifically, these crew members will spend their mission in Earth’s orbit, practicing rendezvous and docking procedures with the lunar landers. The actual lunar landing is still targeted for Artemis IV in 2028. Before anyone steps down onto lunar dust, someone has to make sure the lander’s hatch opens correctly.

We don’t talk about that part enough.

In leadership and in life, we’re obsessed with the moonshot—so much that it’s become a workplace buzzword for a bold vision. But between the vision and the outcome, there’s almost always a dry run that nobody puts on the highlight reel—the uncelebrated middle. The preparation that looks like nothing is happening is really the heavy lift that gives us the confidence to shine when the moment is real.

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I’ve seen this docking-mission oversight in organizations before. A leader casts a compelling vision; the team feels inspired; and then somewhere in the gap between ambition and readiness, momentum stalls—not because the vision was wrong but because no one attempted a dry run.

Great leaders earn their reputation in the gap. Think about the leaders you most admire. I’d argue that what separates them isn’t the size of their vision but their willingness to stay present during the testing and retesting. Consider James Dyson, who built 5,127 prototypes before creating the bagless vacuum, or Rent the Runway’s Jennifer Hyman and Jenny Fleiss, who tested their business model on Harvard’s campus before launching online with a full inventory. 

Artemis III will likely get less fanfare than Artemis IV. No one’s writing poems about docking procedures. But without this mission, there’s no landing. The crew who practices the approach makes the touchdown possible for the crew who follows.

That’s servant leadership at about 17,700 miles per hour.

What’s the docking mission in your organization right now? What is the unglamorous, essential work you or your team is doing that won’t make the highlight reel but will make everything else possible? It’s time to treat it like the stellar moment it is.