Chapter 7 – Vision, Structure, and Focus

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

— Bruce Lee

Other than mothers, pilots are the finest multi-taskers there are. Pilots are also the finest executors of any professionals. As a leader, you and your career will go to heights (excuse the pun) unimaginable if you can learn and put into practice the secret that pilots use on every flight to get things done.

A pilot’s level of training, consistency, and structure are what make the air the safest route to travel from one place to another. A pilot may have thousands of hours of flight time, and he or she may, even while blindfolded, know the precise location of every one of the hundreds of switches, knobs, levers, fuses, breakers, dials, and gauges found in a cockpit. Pilots know the feel of their aircraft as if they are extensions of their own bodies. Pilots fly in the most brutal weather conditions—sometimes taking off and landing with next to zero visibility. Yet, they always, without fail, follow a strict procedure of pre-flight, pre-takeoff, climb, cruise, landing, and post-flight checklists. This routine keeps them on plan and focused. When a pilot takes his very first flight as a student, he starts on that initial day with a message that is repeated to pilots over and over:

“Fly ahead of the airplane” simply means always to be thinking one or two seconds ahead of what the aircraft will do. Planes, and even more so jets, take a little bit of time for the control input from the pilot to take effect in the aircraft. Always staying ahead of the airplane prevents any traumatic hard landings and close calls.

When something goes wrong, a pilot’s training kicks in as if by instinct. Control the plane, find an airport, and land the plane. A pilot will never sit there and ponder the question, “I wonder what caused that? Let’s get the manuals out to see whether we can discover the problem.” That only happens when a bunch of managers get together in a boardroom.

The pilot’s plan is: Land the airplane; figure out the cause later.

Pilots are known for focused and precise execution. Like a business, they have a destination. They have a plan for how they are going to get there.

A pilot knows that his aircraft is capable of the journey and he has enough resources—similar to a factory, a leader should know whether the operation is capable of the journey and whether the available resources are qualified for the job.

Pilots have governance for the execution of the plan in the form of checklists, and they have waypoints along the journey to track progress. Similarly, leaders should always be checking progress to plan.

In an aircraft operation, clear and precise communications are given to other flight crew personnel on board and to the ground controllers and company and vice versa. In business, companies with a solid record for successful execution have always had clear communications rooted in the attainment of their goals. Every stakeholder—from leaders, to the board, partners, vendors, unions, and every single member of the company’s front-line team—knows exactly what his or her role and responsibility is. The guy taking out the garbage from the kitchen in a hotel

restaurant knows exactly how his performance affects the chef’s ability to get meals out on time and to meet the customer’s standards. He knows how not doing his job correctly and on time impacts revenue, productivity, costs, and customer satisfaction.

I have heard managers tell me that pilots have a very narrow job focus, and they don’t have the day-to-day issues that management faces in business. (Notice how I said “managers” and not “leaders”? That’s because managers usually come up with reasons why things cannot be done, versus leaders who find a way to make things happen). Aircrews work in an environment that is very complex, dynamic, and features multiple things going on at one time. Not only do they have to worry about the safety, comfort, and convenience of their crew and passengers, but they have to monitor and manage the weather, air traffic control instructions, weights and balances, fuel systems and fuel flow, hydraulic systems, electrical systems, navigation, communication and radar systems, multiple engines, altitude, auto-pilot systems, cabin pressure and temperature, and the list goes on.

Yet with all this to monitor, air crews stick to their plans and focus purely on execution. If something goes wrong, their single-minded focus is: “Fly the aircraft and land at the nearest safe location.” That’s it; that’s all.

Successful leaders also know that execution is elusive in most organizations. In fact, 97 percent of all leaders who have a strategic plan will fail to execute their plan because of their lack of leadership based on some very basic principles. After the executives have gone off to the mountains for a three-day strategy retreat where they drink some good wine and develop the new plan, they return to the office very excited, stating, “!is time it is going to be different!” Then most return to the same old ways of mediocre performance. So what’s missing?

The 3 percent of companies that execute know this: For a plan to be implemented successfully, the senior leaders have to take an active role. They have to detail and communicate the plan to each and every stakeholder in the business. They have to ensure that every single person on the team understands his or her individual roles, responsibilities, and how doing his job affects the company’s success. People have to know how they are going to be measured. The senior leaders then need to implement a regular program of governance where, at least monthly, the plan is reviewed to ensure that the implementation is on track. If the team is off plan, the executives need to understand why and implement course corrections. Re-communicating every month to the team is critical. Just as a pilot checks in and communicates at regular checkpoints, an organization’s team needs to know how it is doing. This is a huge motivator!

Unsuccessful businesses mainly suffer from the same infection. Senior leaders think they are the only ones who know what is going on and that regular front-line employees would not understand, so it’s best if we just keep driving them on metrics they do not know or buy into. I call it “corporate archery”—it’s what happens when you give a person a bow and arrow, blindfold him, and expect the archer to hit a bull’s eye. The best leaders in the world, like pilots, follow a very structured approach to strategy, implementation, and communication to the entire team. Interesting as well, these organizations have the highest levels of employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and profitability.

Coincidence?

Regardless of whether you are leader of one or many, do you have a process established to document action plans and a calendar follow-up to insure that projects are on track?

Do you regularly review action plans for strategies or projects to make sure things are on budget and on time?

Does everyone know what his or her roles and responsibilities are for each action?

Can all actions be measured?

Does everyone know what the score is—that is, do they know what results have been achieved?

Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, and International Keynote Speaker. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Click here to get his weekly Tuesday Tune Up blog posts straight to your inbox.