“At our core, we’re about leadership. That’s it, and so the people we went to get right off the bat were those that we knew were proven leaders in their field.”
Ché Bolden
President and CEO of the Charles F. Bolden Group
Insight by ASMC
For the Charles F. Bolden Group, the future is to infinity and beyond (with good leadership)
When a business struggles, it’s about leadership, contends Ché Bolden. It’s why the Charles F. Bolden Group focuses on leadership in helping advance science...
Leadership. It’s the singular focus for the Charles F. Bolden Group when it partners with a business.
No organization should make the same mistakes twice, Ché Bolden believes. Bolden is chairman and president of the Bolden Group. He took over the business from his father, Charles F. Bolden Jr., an astronaut and former NASA administrator who founded it after leaving government service.
“It all boils back down to leadership. It’s either good leadership and good team building, or it’s not,” said Bolden on the American Society of Military Comptrollers‘ The Business of Defense podcast on Federal News Network.
Bolden talked with ASMC CEO Rich Brady. The two are long-time friends. “We started out our careers in the Marine Corps as second lieutenants at the Basic School — in the same platoon, right across the hall from each other,” Brady noted.
It was that Marine Corps training and service, paired with being exposed to both his father and many military leaders growing up, that Bolden believes put him on the path toward helping organizations improve how they evolve for success.
Before his storied NASA career, Bolden’s father had also been a Marine. Bolden said growing up that he often spent time around corps leaders, astronauts and other people who became mentors and who inspired him.
“I knew I wanted to be like them. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to be like them, but I was like, ‘You know what, that’s it, and I want to do it,’ ” he recalled. “So from a very early age, I knew I was going to be a fighter pilot, or I knew I was going to be a Marine.”
Leadership ecosystem vs. traditional consultancy
Although the Charles F. Bolden Group now has many experts and strategists, it’s also still a family business. Bolden’s sister, a doctor, and his wife both work for the company, which Bolden considers an ecosystem of leadership rather than a traditional consultancy. While the advancement of space, technology and security are main focuses, the group’s work has expanded into medical, health care and education organizations too.
“We wanted to create more of an ecosystem where people could join and contribute to the conversation, where we don’t have to be the sole source of information or lead the conversation,” Bolden said, adding, “We try to create enduring partnerships.”
For the group, this approach works because space exploration, national security or cybersecurity, for instance, don’t exist in a vacuum, he said. They can’t exist without science, technology, engineering, health, art and design.
But ultimately, the Bolden Group sees its mission as helping organizations working in complex industries solve critical problems through improving leadership.
“We’re able to go into some of the most hostile, complex, jacked-up places and help set them on the right path,” Bolden said.
What’s more, “every member of the Bolden Group, whether they’re a regular member or an affiliated member, has demonstrated that they know how to lead and build teams, and they know how to be members of teams.”
“Every member of the Bolden Group, whether they’re a regular member or an affiliated member, has demonstrated that they know how to lead and build teams, and they know how to be members of teams.”
Ché Bolden
President and CEO of the Charles F. Bolden Group
The DEIB leadership connection
Diversity and culture play an essential role in all successful organizations, he said. It’s a lesson that Bolden attributes as pivotal during his father’s own career trajectory at NASA. Charles Bolden was the space agency’s first Black leader.
“I’m incredibly proud to be the son of someone who went into an organization in the national government and took it from being middle-tier as far as the place where people wanted to work to being the No. 1 federal organization in the administration,” he said. “That’s what happened with NASA. And I am not ashamed to say that I have no doubt that that’s due to my father and the people around him, and the type of leadership that they displayed.”
Today, companies must make diversity, equity, inclusivity and sustainability a consideration in their leadership practices, Bolden said. Otherwise, “you’re probably not going to be poised to be very successful.”
The next economic frontier: Space
Given the Bolden Group’s origin story and also Ché Bolden’s own career as a pilot in the Marine Corps, it should be no surprise that the group continues to work with businesses involved in advancing space exploration.
From his perspective, industry has the opportunity to push forward expansion into space that’s fundamentally distinct from the continued role of government and government-backed efforts to evolve the ability to make travel to and existence in space easier and affordable.
“The auto industry is probably a pretty decent analog for where space could go. We have finite numbers of automakers, but the market is not closed off to new automakers,” Bolden said.
When thinking about the future of space, “people should maintain this idea that it is an open economy,” he said. “It is there for anybody, and there for the taking.” Once thriving in space is possible and more people can go there — although space remains very expensive and very hard still, Bolden noted — there will be a need for services and businesses of all kinds.
To help evolve this idea, the Bolden Group has a created a unique ecosystem called Inter Astra that it wants to become a global public square for space knowledge, akin to how Bloomberg is a hub for financial advice.
“Inter Astra has a solid foundation of expertise to build on. But our expertise is not what’s most important. The institutional expertise is not what’s most important,” Bolden said. “It’s the new and emerging expertise that people have yet to tap into.”
To listen to the full discussion between Ché Bolden, chairman and president of the Charles F. Bolden Group, and Rich Brady, CEO at the American Society of Military Comptrollers, click the podcast play button below:
Discover other The Business of Defense podcasts here.
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