Flying through Uncertainty

As always, and particularly now, you can only move as fast as your slowest runner, so be careful to understand how fast you should be going and who you can take with you.

What is happening now, regardless of the imperfection of interventions, is asking something of us, and for most of us, that will likely be somewhat different than business as usual. 

My assertion is that we have one critical choice in the midst of external uncertainty and that is to either allow change to happen to us, or for us to take some command over the changes we make to ourselves, our thinking and our impact in the midst of volatility.

Digging into the concept of choice I was drawn to the origin of the idea of three different types of people, the well known saying that is actually from a speech given in 1931 by Nicholas Murray Butler, the President of Columbia University in New York. I feel his original idea has been somewhat diluted:

“The vast population of this earth, and indeed nations themselves, may readily be divided into three groups. There are the few who make things happen, the many more who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens. Every human being is born into this third and largest group; it is for himself, his environment and his education to determine whether he shall rise to the second group or even to the first.”

Taking this notion into the context of the day, I thought it interesting to ponder the management of turbulence in aeronautics (Naturally! You don’t want to see inside my head). In high levels of turbulence, it’s important you don’t stop. Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t think, all challenge and discomfort requires a rewire and reset to comfortably fly through the vulnerable zone. 

From what I have read, experienced pilots will tell you that slowing down in high turbulence is mostly about passenger comfort not about the safety of the aircraft. This is only true in large passenger aircraft and is, of course, relative to the size and weight of the aircraft (an interesting analogy for business perhaps).

Importantly, pilots talk about slowing down to optimal manoeuvring speed, and that often this change in speed is only marginal. It begs the question about our own optimal manoeuvring speed.

I have the luxury and the danger of having a small business, a light aircraft in a turbulent economy. Whilst it makes us more agile, not reaching a safe and optimal manoeuvring speed in high turbulence could cause serious structural damage. This also means that it is not at all safe to slow down below the optimal speed.

The danger of having superior agility is the range of wrong moves one can make at high speed. We have at times in our own business these last 5 months travelled at some dangerous speeds at our own risk.

In short, the lesson is too fast (or too much), and you will lose focus and become inattentive to the truly important. Too slow, and that turbulence will most definitely wreak havoc, particularly if you’re not flying an A380.

If you are however flying that A380, high turbulence is a reality check for a lack of agility, the length of time it takes to change speed or altitude and the inability to keep up with the rate of change. This reality check could very well give rise to assessing the weight of the aircraft and its responsive agility. We will quickly learn in the coming 6 to 12 months that drawing swimlanes on a whiteboard, is in fact, not the definition of being agile. This lack of agility allows our smaller competitors to outmanoeuvre us in these times.

This brings us back to the importance of choice. The lesson from the aircraft analogy is that we must know ourselves and our capability if we are to withstand and penetrate the turbulence ahead. People and businesses capable of introspection and acute self-awareness tend to make better choices amidst volatility.

This is the most critical of all factors in uncertainty, awareness of self and awareness of capability in advance of strategic choice. It enables the consideration of new alternatives and broadening the range of options we perceive we have available to us.

In business, we talk about reading the play, but one of the most important corresponding variables is reading the play in light of one’s skill, experience and capability. Again, this is a very different game depending upon the scale of your business. 

Now, we must take our established awareness, and curiously assess the conditions in light of our capability. Introspection is the platform upon which we can curiously and knowingly navigate uncertainty.

What we must be capable of seeing is a new possibility amidst the line of fire. We must be able to see which of our old paradigms are of use and which are obstructive in the context of current change. We must first know ourselves (our optimal manoeuvring speed), then remain curious about our enemy so that we can make the right choices that lead us through the turbulence ahead. 

Stay Safe. Godspeed.

Scott