080: DIS: Into the Forest I Go

Welcome! Thanks for joining me today. So many of the platitudes and pieces of advice the highly educated, but often unexperienced, leadership gurus out there give sound good, but they don’t often make a lot of practical sense. In this episode, we’re going to dive into two words a lot of the gurus say, but rarely add any substance to: casting vision. I’m going to show you how to do that and how to reinforce it with your teams. And I get to do that, courtesy of Captain Lorca in the 9^th episode of the 1^st season of Discovery, Into the Forest I Go.

<<Transporter>>

The USS Discovery is orbiting the planet Pahvo and Starfleet is ordering them to Starbase 46. Let the Klingons take Pahvo to save the rest of the Federation. Captain Lorca is livid. He feels like he’s being ordered to back down from a fight, and possibly the biggest fight to date! The main Klingon ship, the Sarcophagus Ship is enroute to the planet now. But, Starfleet has pulled in all their best scientists to try to crack the code on the Klingon cloaking device.

Lorca sets course for Starbase 46 at warp, instead of jumping. He tells them that if they can bust through the cloak, they’ll jump back and take on the Klingons. “We have just under 3 hours to find a solution.” 3:11 If they can’t figure it out, they show up, as expected, and work with the scientists they’ve pulled together. He sees it as a real win-win.

To justify not using the spore drive to return, he orders Stamets to get a full, medical workup. “I understand you have some irritation. Yeah, it’s itchy.” 3:33 Seems fun until Stamets understands that Lorca wants all the tests run. All of them. Stamets has been hiding the side effects from the spore drive from Dr Culber, his partner. Not only will the ship officially know something is happening to him, but he’s been lying to his husband.

The team has a theory. Basically scanning infinitesimal shifts in the gravimetric fields around the ship. Seems easy enough, right? Like in a Star Trek-y magic science kind of world, yeah? Well, it is, until Saru gets to the nuts and bolts of what actually needs to happen. Lorca asks how they’ll track these almost imperceptible blips and he says, “By placing sensors physically on board the Klingon vessel.” 6:11 Lorca is a little freaked out, but he’s game. And then Michael Burnham busts in with a harsh dose of reality, “It’ll take time. How long? Days.” 6:45 He doesn’t know how they’ll get over that, but he is confident the spore drive can make the difference.

He goes to check-in with Stamets and see what ideas he has, but Dr Culber lays it out. Stamets is in a bad way and the spore drive can do permanent harm to him. “Lt Stamets main parietal lobe…” 7:15 Lorca responds, as expected, and starts problem solving with Stamets. They figure if they make 133 micro-jumps in less than 4 minutes once the sensors are in place, they’ll have the telemetry they need. Stamets has serious doubts, so we see Lorca do another thing he’s done before. He casts his vision. Lorca has been capturing data from the jumps all along, and what he has discovered is mind blowing! “They could be alternative universes connected to the mycelial network.” 9:22 Stamets can’t wait to dive into this. Lorca believes, and Stamets buys into, these 133 jumps will give them all the data they need to jump into other universes!

With a plan, Lorca orders security officer Ash Tyler to put a team together and get the sensors in place. After a heated argument between Lorca and Burnham, the team will be her and Tyler. Knowing what we will know later in the season, Lorca is trying to protect Burnham, but, honestly, no one actually knows that yet. So, everyone gets to work! Stamets and Tilly are mapping the jumps while the team prepares to head over to the Klingon ship. They jump back to Pahvo, and it is on!

Tyler and Burnham beam over and stay teamed up as they look for the locations to plant the sensors. The Sarcophagus Ship starts shooting at Discovery while it evades. It’s cat and mouse and the chase is on, buying time till the sensors are in place. They get one sensor in place and are headed to the bridge for the next. On the way, though, they find a room full of dead bodies and two, left barely alive. Admiral Cornwell and L’Rell! They survived and have been left here! Burnham attends to Cornwell while Tyler goes for L’Rell. As soon as he sees her, though, he goes into traumatic shock. We see scenes of horrifying, graphic torture. He’s frozen, so Burnham stuns her. Cornwell, who is a psychologist spells it out. “I’ve treated patients with PTSD. He’s not going to be of any help to you.” 19:40 Burnham leaves them, telling them she’ll be back, and goes to place the final sensor. She gets it in place and then confronts General Kol.

Discovery attacks the ship and they cloak. The sensors are transmitting. It’s working! “Commence jump sequence.” 22:20 And they start the 133 jumps. The pop out, blast the ship, pop in, pop out, blast the ship and over and over again. Tilly and Culber are monitoring Stamets and he’s starting to fall apart. “Tilly how many more jumps? 96 more.” 23:04 They keep going. Everything is working well.

On the ship, while Cornwell provides crisis treatment for Tyler, Burnham is in hand-to-hand combat with Kol.

Stamets is losing it. He’s spouting nonsense and his vitals are off the charts. Culber tells Lorca he has to abort, but we know Lorca too well for that, don’t we? “Do whatever you have to to keep him alive through this.” 24:28

The jumps continue as does Burnham’s fight. Neither is going well. Stamets is a wreck but they complete the sequence. Saru is crunching the data as Burnham fights just to survive. “Your death will secure my place as absolute ruler.” 30:13 At the last possible moment, they crack the code and beam them out, Tyler, Burnham and Cornwell. But L’Rell jumps into the beam and gets over to the Discovery as well! But the crew has her well in hand. “And a Klingon prisoner that has been taken into custody.” 31:33

Being able to see through the cloak, Lorca puts drops into his eyes – remember he can’t handle bright lights or flashes – stands in front of the viewscreen, showing empty space where the cloaked ship is, and orders, “And fire.” 31:48 And just like that, the Sarcophagus Ship is no more! Score one for the good guys! They put Cornwell on a shuttle to a nearby Starbase for emergency treatment. Starfleet informs Lorca they are to return to Starbase and 46. And once they arrive, Lorca will be recognized for what he accomplished here. “Starfleet would like to award you with the Legion of Honor.” 34:08

Burnham and Tyler talk. He shares more about his captivity on the Klingon ship, back when he first met Lorca. L’Rell was not just his torturer, but she also took advantage of him. He not only let it happen, but encouraged it. It was his way of surviving. He is ashamed but knows he did what he had to to stay alive. “She’s the reason I have nightmares every night.” 36:01

Lorca checks in on Stamets. He’s recovering but is in rough shape. Stamets offers to the Starbase, but he says it will be the last jump he makes. When they get to the Starbase, he’s going to get the medical care, and let them do research on him. He’s ready to slow down and take care of himself. So, Lorca makes it so. “One last jump, then.” 40:25 

They set up and make that last jump. And things go south big time!! Alarms are going off, systems are in disarray, and Stamets is in serious pain! “Ahhhhhhh!” 43:48 A thing happened, that if you blinked you would have missed it, but just as they initiated the jump, Lorca did an override and entered his own coordinates on his console. And it had absolutely catastrophic results! “Captain. I don’t know where we are.” 45:16 And that’s where we leave the Discovery and her crew. Lost in space!

<<Red Alert>>

This episode was called the end of Chapter One when it first aired. There was a 2-month break between this and the next episode, and I remember those two months well! All the theories and speculation around what just happened; it was an exciting time! But this one did, indeed, wrap up a lot of the early season threads in the show and set us up for something I’m not sure anyone was expecting at the time.

Quarks – Ads

Discovery is Star Trek’s first hyper-serialized production. Even in the serialization of Deep Space 9, they still had one-off episodes and an overall, episodic feel. That is not the case with this show. Each episode leads directly into the next. And that becomes super problematic when you have the behind-the-scenes kind of drama they had on this show.

In the first season, things didn’t completely fall apart behind the scenes, that happens later, but they sure didn’t start well. The series premiere had been delayed, and before the first episode even dropped, the showrunner, Bryan Fuller stepped down and assumed a producer role instead. Akiva Goldsman joined the team and there was a lot of change in the creative leadership of the project.

One of the many ways they managed that was this mid-season break. We got this first story which started on the Shenzou when Burnham kinda sorta started the Klingon War. Then we met Lorca and the spore drive and all the stuff on Discovery. At this point, we have settled in our crew and the general roles they’re going to play. So they bring everything to a crescendo, blow up the big-bad, well, the second, no, third big-bad so far. But, at least they have all been on the same ship. But, that ship is no more! It’s all blowed up. So where to go now? Well, we’ll see that in the next episode.

But some notable stuff in this one. We get the first kiss between two men on Star Trek. They showed two women kiss way back in DS9’s Rejoined. That episode is often heralded as the first kiss between two women on television, but that accolade actually goes to LA Law who beat DS9 by 4 years. We also get the first female nipples shown in Star Trek. Though they are prosthetic and Klingon and shown very briefly. So, yeah. There’s that too.

A few things I really loved in this episode. We got peak Lorca. He’s close to a goal, that we don’t know he has yet, but Jason Isaacs plays it to perfection. He’s eager; he can see the opportunity right there, but he knows he has to keep his cool and stay patient. Really well done.

I also love that they saved Admiral Cornwell. Spoiler alert, she ends up being a real favorite of mine as the series progresses. The initial plan was for her to get killed in this episode to help get Tyler and Burnham off the ship, but all the writers saw her as such a strong character they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. And thank goodness. There’s some great stuff to come from her.

One piece I will call out quickly. And this is a trigger warning. If you’re listening with kids, skip ahead a little bit right now, or if sexual assault is activating for you, please skip ahead now. Skip ahead about a minute, after this will go into the Command Codes. I’ll give a second before starting.

But this episode, in short visuals and in a beautifully acted scene between Michael Burnham and Ash Tyler, brought up a topic that isn’t discussed enough. And that’s that victims of rape can be male too. According to data from the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, in about 14% of reported rapes, males are the victim while 1 in 25 reported sexual assaults is against a man. If you, or someone you know has been the victim of any sexual assault, you can reach out to RAINN for confidential support. That’s online.rainn.org or 800-656-4673.

So, kudos to Star Trek for bringing up this challenging, but important topic.

<<Command Codes>>

What is leadership? I mean, it’s a word we hear a lot and use a bunch too. ‘She showed great leadership in that moment,’ or, ‘All we needed was a little leadership there.’ This applies to work, to family, to community, to politics…across the board. We use this term to mean so many things. Today, though, we see leadership in action with Captain Lorca. I am going to share with you his secret weapon and how he has been able to not only get people to do the things he wants them to, but has made them excited and eager to do so. I’m going to talk about casting, and communicating vision and reinforcing people’s acceptance of that vision.

Before we talk about that, we’re going to spend some time talking about the often used phrase, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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First off, if you’re like me, you don’t believe in a road to hell. It’s an oversimplified, pedestrian folk telling of what is really out there. A highway to hell. Kidding! I’m kidding. Just had to get a little homage to Bon Scott in there.

But how often have you done something, or someone on your team has done something, thinking it was the bee’s knees; the best thing since sliced bread #2…all of the points if you get that reference, but after you do it, people are actually upset, maybe even angry? If we’re being honest, it’s happened to all of us more than once.

That’s the difference between intent and perception. This is such a common issue we have that ubiquitous saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Some people attribute that saying to Bernard of Clairvaux in the early 10^th century, others to William Tyndale in the 14^th century, and some take it all the way back to around 19 BC when Virgil wrote in the Aenid, facilis descensus Averno, or, the descent to hell is easy.

Regardless of where it came from, it’s a part of our vernacular now, and for good reason. When we don’t know, or understand, exactly where other people are at, we can end up in situations like this. Very often a person, or a team wants to do something on behalf of others, let’s say a type of celebration or recognition. They meet, not including the people to be recognized, to plan what they are going to do. Then they do it and the people are underwhelmed, at best. The intent was great, the perception and reception, not so much. That’s because you made a decision without the people included.

We’re going to talk more, shortly, about understanding what motivates people and how to use that as recognition or to encourage motivation, but you have to find a way to confirm what you think with other’s reality.

In this episode, Burnham takes a huge risk. Which, honestly, doesn’t narrow down which episode of Discovery I’m talking about, really, but, in this one, when she does it, she confronts General Kol using her communicator as a universal translator, and it does not go well. “This device is a translator. Proof we want to communicate. It is proof you are robbing us of our identity.” 25:50 Starfleet doesn’t know a lot about the Klingons at this point. They’ve had interactions, skirmishes, but they don’t know them the way we do. So Burnham comes at this in what she thinks, what Starfleet would think, is a positive and peaceful way. We come in peace. Yeah, the Klingons have weaponized that phrase so it does not help the situation.

I have a fairly recent example, that is much lower stakes than what Burnham faced, but might resonate with you. I hired a new manager during our response to COVID. I worked with her for just over a year before we ever met in person. For our first, in-person team meeting, I brought donuts because, that’s what you do, right? We work in an office so we love us some donuts. Especially when they have just the right amount of maple on them, not too much that overpowers the donut itself but just enough that it feels like sweet sprites, dancing, ever so gently in your mouth. Mmmm. Oh, sorry…got a little distracted there. So, I bring donuts and am feeling pretty good about myself and how this will create a welcoming and fun environment for us all coming together.

Turns out, she’s lactose intolerant and can’t do dairy. And, newsflash, most mainstream donut joints are making their donuts with dairy. She was very gracious about it, but was clearly disappointed. The rest of the team are munching away and she’s just sitting there. Now, all I had to do, before deciding, on my own, to swing by and get donuts, was ask: ‘hey I might pick up some snacks on the way to the meeting. Do you have any food allergies or preferences?’ Super simple. In this case, just a few minutes’ drive away, the town had a vegan donut shop. Could have stopped there and we all would have been winners. But I chose, on my own, without consulting the people impacted, to do a thing I intended to be a kind gesture. What I got instead was someone that was new to the team feeling a little left out. So, just get to know the people you work with or that you intend to do things for. Ask questions and confirm that what you intend is how it will be perceived and received.

When you know the people that are impacted, you can uniquely provide things to reinforce behaviors or encourage motivation. Here, I think about Captain Lorca. The Discovery has an impossible task in front of it. They need to figure out how to break through the cloaking technology the Klingons are using to decimate the Federation. To do that, they determine they will set up sensors and then jump 133 times to gather a bunch of data points. But, first, Stamets, who navigates the ship through the mycelial network on these jumps, has never done anything like this before, and second, the system itself, like the physical makeup of how the jumps work isn’t built for this. Stamets sees the system limitations as a reason this can’t happen, but Lorca has come to know Stamets very well. He knows what is important to him, so he uses that to encourage the motivation necessary for Stamets to make these jumps happen. “The spore drive can’t handle that volume. And that’s going to stop you?” 8:39

We get a hint at the end of this episode and will see in the next one, that Lorca’s intentions were far from good. But, at this point, and for all anyone on Discovery knows, his intentions are great! He wants to end this war as quickly as possible. And by applying what he knows of Stamets, he has paved the road, not to hell, but to align with what his good intentions. Now, all that said, he literally did take them to hell and had terrible intentions, but that’s for a future episode.

But all of that is for nothing, if people don’t know what they are doing this for. If Stamets was just showing up everyday, punching a clock, plugging in and out of the spore drive, he probably wouldn’t have taken the risks he did to get through all those jumps. And that’s where the work Lorca has been doing, since we first met him in episode 3, pays off. He has created and communicated a vision with extreme clarity, that others understand and have bought into. This, this, my friends, is leadership.

But, like I said in the beginning of this episode – so now what? How does that happen and how do I do it? To start, you’ll need to lean into your Deep Space 9 and the teachings of the Prophets. A leader that crafts, shares and enrolls others in their vision has to live in both the present and the future, at the same time.

Let’s start in the future. And here’s the cool thing about starting in the future – you get to define what it will be! Now, to be realistic you need to look at trends and any corporate or organizational goals there are, but, as the leader, you get to define the future. Of course, as the leader you’ll be held accountable, at some level, for that vision of the future and getting there, so don’t be ridiculous, but do be aspirational.

As an example. I’m leading a team, today, that scans paper document and does data entry to attach metadata to the scanned images. So, a ridiculous vision for the future would be that the organization adopt a paperless approach and we no longer need to scan paper or do data entry. But if you’ve ever worked on an organization’s paperless initiatives, you know that this is a pipe dream, at best. But a realistic vision for the future, based on analyzing technology and industry trends, is utilizing Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Robotic Process Automation to automate capturing metadata and using actual robots and robotic devices to handle opening and scanning of mail. It’s a great vision, right? Faster, cheaper, more accurate, and will allow the people currently doing the work to focus on other tasks that require their ingenuity and unique thinking.

So, that’s it right? I take the information and tell a story with it, paint a picture with words and then people are all-in! Right? Wrong, unfortunately. No, we can’t just live in the future and tell people about how great it is. We also have to live in the now. We have to connect with the people we work with in the present. “You showed me what this device can do. Now we can do than we ever imagined.” 9:37 GRAB THE WHOLE QUOTE FOR THE NEXT PIECE

Find the things that are important to people now and connect your vision to those things and those people. Here, Lorca talks about his vision of exploring what has never even been imagined before. But he doesn’t just tell Stamets about the exploring. He connects with him. He talks about his role in showing Lorca what the technology was capable of. He feeds off of Stamets’ passion for science and his drive to explore. He connects the future to the now and he does it in a way that is uniquely personal for Stamets.

But that’s not all he does! No, he goes a step further and this is so brilliant. “You showed me what this device can do. Now we can do than we ever imagined.” 9:37 GRAB THE WHOLE QUOTE FOR THE NEXT PIECE We have to remember that the future is all well and good, but they are in a for real crisis right now. The Klingons are actively trying to wipe them off the galactic map. So the overriding vision is to end and win this war. But what he does here that is so brilliant, and a thing so many leaders fail to do, is he gives the what’s next. We win the war, so now what? He has crafted a plan and vision for defeating the Klingons but then acknowledges and leverages all the work done to do that into his next vision. To explore other universes and truly go where no one has gone before.

Live in the future. See the future. Get good at describing that future as you live in the present. Connect with your people in the now and in personal ways that are uniquely meaningful to each of them. And, finally, recognize and reinforce when people help move from the now into the future. “They wanted to give me a medal. I told them to give it to you.” 38:42

In this act, in recognizing what Stamets has done, and in a public way, I mean, the admiralty of Starfleet will be pinning a medal on his chest. Probably gonna be a ceremony and all kinds of stuff. But in that act, Lorca is putting his money where his mouth is. He is going out of his way to hold up a member of his team that not only shares his vision, but is actively working to make that vision a reality.

As a leader it is not only your job to craft a vision for the future. More importantly, it is your job to get others to buy into and share that vision. You don’t need to move to the future alone; you’re already there! Remember, you live in the future and the present. You have to connect with people, with both good intent and good perception and reception, so others share your vision and move there with you. When you foster a shared vision, and recognize your champions, this enables you to start living in the next future so you can connect in the next present to keep everyone moving forward.

<<Hailing Frequencies>>

This podcast just celebrated its 3^rd year. Thank you for coming along with me on this journey. I have so enjoyed getting to know so many of you and I’ve also loved learning all the things this incredible franchise has offered along the way.

I want to ask a favor from you. Please share this podcast. Whatever app you’re listening on has a share button, I really love the one on Goodpods. It has default sharing to a bunch of social media platforms and even lets you directly recommend it to a friend. But, wherever you’re listening, please share this podcast.

You can even tag and share the show on social media. @ SFLA podcast on twitter, @SFLApodcat @mastodon.world on mastodon and on instagram @jefftakin Jeff, t as in teeny-tiny jumps, a k i n.

Computer, what are we going to watch next time….

The 7^th episode of the 7^th season of Voyager, Body and Soul. It’s a Doctor and Seven episode, and, if I remember correctly, this one touches on the theme in later Voyager around the sentience of holograms. It even has a race that is at war with an army of them. I’m looking forward to watching this one again and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Until then, Ex Astris Scientia!