Upside/Downside - Grow Your Profits and Cash Flow
Poor profits and cash flow got you down?
My name is Matt Cooley and value creation has always been central to my career, from start-ups to multi-billion-dollar product lines. As a finance executive at successful companies, I've noticed a thing or two about what creates versus destroys value. In this podcast, we explore value creation and share a few laughs on the way to higher profits and cash flow.
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I wish you the best on your value creation journey!
Matt Cooley
Upside/Downside - Grow Your Profits and Cash Flow
Ep 11: Two Perspectives on Value Creation with Peter Wise, Retired Rocket Scientist & Former Soup Kitchen Director
We all want to allocate capital where we anticipate maximum returns. But how you measure those returns depends on your mission. In this episode, hear why Peter Wise felt compelled to leave his high tech job building satellites and enter a completely different world as Soup Kitchen Director. Peter also offers a word to the wise (pun intended) on career resiliency for Finance Business Partners. Five, four, three, two, one...!
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Matt
Hi, this is Matt Cooley, host of the podcast Upside Downside where we explore what it takes to be the best finance business partners possible. I'm a finance business partner myself and former president of the New York City chapter of Financial Executives International. Prepare to meet professionals on the front lines of value creation and hear their stories. If you'd like to suggest a future guest for this podcast or be a guest yourself, please reach out. Now on to today's podcast. Please welcome Peter Wise, retired rocket scientist and former soup kitchen director. Welcome, Pete. Thank
SPEAKER_02:you, Matt.
SPEAKER_01:How are you? I'm doing great. Listen, I really appreciate your time today and sharing your story with fellow finance business partners on my podcast. Can you tell me what your career was and why did you take that path, Pete?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I had two careers. My first career goes back to when I was a young student and I always liked science and math in school. But the timing turned out to be incredible for me. When I was a high school senior in 1957, that's when the Soviets launched the first earth orbiting satellite they called Sputnik. So that was the start of the space race. Three years later, I'm in college when President Kennedy, JFK, announced the Apollo program and said we were going to place men on the moon by the end of the decade, the decade of the 1960s. So in 1962, with a double major in physics and math, I began my first career working for RCA, the astro electronics division located in Princeton, New Jersey. And at that point in time, Astro was developing some of the earliest satellites, primarily weather and research satellites, with customers like the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Air Force. Then later, in the 1980s, RCA Astro became the world's foremost developer of geosynchronous commercial communication satellites. with customers around the world, projects like BrazilSat, ChinaSat, and many CompSats for US companies. So there I was at the beginning of the space age. How lucky is that for someone interested in science? Well, that was my first career. I was at Astro for some 36 years until the RCA plant closed in 1998. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:That's very cool. And just how your career aligned with some pretty big history is pretty neat. So I'm curious, how was value determined for something like a satellite? Because you're speaking here to a lot of finance business partners that help executives make decisions. I assume it wasn't the standard cost-benefit analysis that companies use where you enter some data into a spreadsheet and at the bottom spits out the magic answer. So how was value determined for satellites?
SPEAKER_02:Well, the request for proposal, the RFPs for something as complicated as a satellite is relatively detailed, as you might guess. So the way to enhance and create value in our customers' mind was not only to be fully compliant with their requirements, but also to suggest ways to improve the product line. And there were many pathways available, a longer lifetime on orbit, less weight. The weight of a spacecraft is critical because of launch vehicle costs, stronger signal strength from the spacecraft, and of course, lower cost and tighter schedules. So that all speaks to value. But part of that proposal process also involves knowing what your competition is. What was the state of the art of their designs? And what was their reliability history? And back in those times, our main competitors were a company like Hughes in California, El Segundo, and Loral and GE Space Systems.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. You decided to leave your job and pursue a very different path. And we're going to tie this together down, down a few questions later, but how did you end up running the Trenton area soup kitchen?
SPEAKER_02:well i have to go back to the spring of 1985 and at that point i was in the middle of my aerospace career and a friend of mine asked me to to join her on a saturday morning to go down to a soup kitchen down in the inner city of trenton the capital city of new jersey now at that time i didn't know anything about soup kitchens and people living in poverty just were not on my screen And on that first trip, I saw, heard, and smelled things I had never seen, heard, or smelled before. I was repulsed, frankly. I was depressed. And on the way back home, I vowed to myself, I'm never going to go to a soup kitchen again. But for some reason that I cannot explain to you, I found myself down there again a couple of weeks later. And this time, the whole experience turned around for me. I developed what some people call the third eye. I'm pointing towards my forehead here.
SPEAKER_01:Is that where it is? Is that where it is?
SPEAKER_02:That's where it is, I think. And what that means, how I define it, is I could see behind what I was looking at. And what I saw that these homeless, drug and alcohol addicted street people who came to the soup kitchen were my brothers and my sisters. So while continuing to work designing satellites during the week, I began to volunteer at Trenton Soup Kitchens every weekend. And that continued from 1985 up until 1998. When by that time, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, RCA Astro, had become part of Lockheed Martin. And the decision was made to close the Princeton facility and move the product line to the Lockheed facility in Sunnyvale, California. This is all in the spring of 1998. I was given a generous offer to follow the product line to California. My wife and I took a house-owning trip in anticipation of that move. But within the same week, just as I was about to commit to that transfer, I heard through the Urban Grapevine that the Monday through Friday all-day soup kitchen called the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen was looking for a full-time paid executive director. So after 13 years of volunteering at Weekend Soup Kitchens, I felt that I knew the sector pretty well. So I had to make a decision. Will it be spacecraft or soup kitchen?
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:Well, long story short, I selected the Trenton Soup Kitchen. I was there for 10 years. And during that time, we served over 1 million meals to the hungry people in Trenton.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. That's so fascinating. And it's so not typical from a career standpoint. So as we've already stated, this is a podcast about finance business partnership and value creation is a cornerstone skill in that partnership. So When I hear about your two experiences as a scientist and a soup kitchen director, I wonder if the approach to determining value is basically the same, even if the desired output is measured differently. So I'm curious what you think about that value, spacecraft versus soup kitchen.
SPEAKER_02:yeah well it's really two very different areas you know the value of a spacecraft is its own orbit performance whether you're measuring cloud cover or providing gps navigation or communication links it's very specific and very measurable the value of serving in a soup kitchen is a social value first of all feeding people But at the Trenton Soup Kitchen, we did much more. We had an adult education program that tutored people. We had social workers there, addiction services, pro bono legal, dental and nursing visits. We had a large number of projects to help people, to help lift them to lives of self-sufficiency. So our output was not only specifically how many meals we served, but how many GEDs were earned? How many job placements did we get? How much have we improved the lives of people who struggle with these challenges? But having said that, another part of the value equation at the soup kitchen is the perceived value of the organization in the eyes of the funders, whether they be corporations or foundations or the general donor population. So as a 501 nonprofit, we had to be very proactive in fundraising. And to develop the reputation and value of the soup kitchen, we had to convince donors that their gifts to us were well managed and utilized. It's called stewardship. So that involved giving countless talks to corporate groups, civic organizations, faith-based communities. And we did lots of stuff, like we had email blasts, newsletters. We rented billboards, op-ed pieces in the paper and magazines, new donor acquisition mailings, radio and TV, inviting everyone to come to the soup kitchen, perhaps to volunteer. The goal there in creating value was to communicate who we were, what our values were, and how we prudently manage any donations that we receive.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's fascinating to me because regardless of how you measure the value and you outlined it very nicely for the Trenton Soup Kitchen, trying to get the best outcomes with the resources that we have is the goal. And that's value creation, whether it's applied in an environment like Trenton Area Soup Kitchen or with satellites. So I love that story and I love I love how you pivoted to, you know, a completely different mission. But from my perspective, the fundamentals of value creation hold. And I hope that's inspiring to listeners that, you know, work in the nonprofit world. So this role of finance business partnership is changing rapidly, you know, because the world's changing. Technology, just the speed of everything, society's changing. What counsel would you offer to people that are in this role about future career resilience, dealing with change, things like that, and particularly around how value should be measured?
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's a big question. I think in both sectors, you obviously have to stay current in respect of technologies. Always be aware of potential partnerships or critical subcontracts. But I also think, looking into the future, continuing emphasis on communication and soft skills is really critical. technologies change but effective communication is basic that everything we do and analog versus digital skills has to continue to be important you know I think the best tool in the career resiliency toolbox is excellent communication skills But as I think about it, I should also say I think self-care is very important. The workplace, whether you're designing a satellite or managing a social service agency, most places, our work demands are emotionally demanding. And taking care of yourself is really important. You can't take care of anyone or anything else if you can't take care of yourself first.
SPEAKER_01:Right, and that rings true particularly this year, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02:Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, wow. Well, this is very enlightening, and I hope to listeners, again, that it's inspiring. We're doing something a little different this time, but comparing and contrasting value creation with these two examples, as exhibited by your career, Pete, I'm excited to put this out here and see what people think. Really appreciate your perspectives today, Pete.
SPEAKER_02:You're very welcome.
SPEAKER_01:And thank you to our subscribers for listening to this episode of upside downside. We'll see you next time. Thank you.
