News Flash: I have started flying again, finally! I had not realized just how much I missed the whole experience; from the pre-flight prep (I am an admitted planning junkie), to the smell of jet fuel (I have always loved the smell of gas, even when it was on the deck of an aircraft carrier and made me choke). I had forgotten the uniqueness of aviation camaraderie and love of all flying objects that pilots openly share, whether you have known them for 5 minutes, or a lifetime. I am once again luxuriating in being able to enjoy the perspective one gets from leaving the 2D world to rise above and look down upon the flat plane of normal human existence with a vantage point only few beyond the birds truly experience.
But most of all, I love the fidelity of the feedback loop in aviation. I find that in my personal and professional life, any sense of control I have over situations, people or outcomes, is illusory at best. In fact, one of the things I find the most difficult about being a VC is that the feedback loops are quite long, and often non-existent. One day you make a recommendation at a board meeting, hire a new executive, strike a promising new partnership, or secure new financing, and hopefully, someday, far down the line, good things will come from it. The same is true for many of my life’s other activities as well.
But when I get in the plane and move the stick up and to the left just that much, lo and behold, the airplane moves up and to the left, immediately, and precisely – well, most of the time, at least. Of course, this cuts both ways…you had better apply the right control input when there is a crosswind, or when you are making a flap transition, and you better flip the right switches when you are experiencing some sort of an emergency as this high fidelity feedback system is also much more unforgiving than any everyday activity and thus there is little margin for error when you are operating an aircraft.
There are good lessons in all of this; namely, how do you create intermediate feedback loops in activities that are inherently not given to them so that you can gain better insights into the distant future outcome of an current activity and make mid-point course corrections which can ensure ultimate success. And in situations where there is much more immediate feedback, how do you make better initial input decisions by gaining critical information a priori or perhaps utilize simulated training so that the feedback seems less mercurial and ultimate outcomes less surprising.
More importantly, being back in the air has added a joy back into my life that I did not realize I had lost. I am sure there are activities that once filled this hole for you as well so I urge you to rediscover a love of painting seascapes, writing in a journal or hiking the local trails. Whatever the case, the perspective, joy and energy these activities will bring to the rest of your life is worth the time and effort it takes to reclaim them.
Finally, check out my new plane at http://www.cirrusdesign.com/aircraft/gallery/.
The story of Cirrus and great design are topics for another day.
I am struggling to think of an activity without intermediate feedback loops, even if it is only communication of what is going on. I was once "savaged" in a meeting for the lateness of delivery of my staff. After the meeting we checked statistics.... we delivered most a little early... the late ones were on time. We tackled this by giving feedback to our "clients" on what was going on an the outlook for hitting dates.... our actual performance did not changed, but at the next meeting my team was praised for dramatically upping their performance! In truth performance didn't change just the communication.
Posted by: tartle | January 13, 2006 at 07:58 AM