Seth Godin’s blog today damns pilots by praising them.
He says that they are “calm and focused and consistent, and yes, boring.” Nothing more than checklist tickers and interview puppets. He concludes by saying:
We don’t need pilots. We need instigators and navigators, rabble rousers and innovators. People who can’t follow a checklist to save their life, but invent the future every day.
I think the world needs more pilots, both literally and as instigators and innovators. Today, unusually, I think Seth Godin is talking rubbish.
First, let’s look at some of the other skills that pilots have:
- Precise, controlled risk-taking. Looking at the weather, I think I might need to take extra fuel in case I have to divert to a different airfield.
- Leadership. An airliner captain has to manage passengers and crew. Even a small plane pilot has to work with maintenance, operations, air traffic controllers and the ramp crew. Either way, as the commander of the plane, the flight is your legal responsibility. No buck passing.
- Multi-factor planning. Pilots constantly juggle many variables: time, performance, fuel, air traffic control restrictions, logistics (fuel, oil, equipment, charts) to achieve a specific goal. This isn’t checklist-following, this is making the best decision with the best available information.
- Multitasking and prioritisation. Pilots have to fly the plane, navigate, work the radio, manage all the systems and keep the passengers happy. They have to do these things more or less simultaneously. At the same time they have to give their attention fully to each task in turn. It’s a flow state, perfected and sustained. If pilots seem calm and collected, it’s because they have trained long and hard to be like that, not because they are boring.
Now let’s look at the correlation between being a pilot and being an “instigator, rabble rouser and innovator.” I won’t say navigator, because all pilots can navigate.
- Pilots make good entrepreneurs. In a typical syndicate of plane owners in the UK, the one I fly with, more than half are entrepreneurs. Speaking personally, I have started two businesses in my life: Intelligent Games and now, Articulate Marketing. Did I mention that I’m a pilot? (See my other blog, ModernPilot.com.)
- Pilots make good innovators. Eclipse Aviation. They started a revolution in air transport with the Eclipse 500 very light jet. Who started Eclipse? Vern Raburn, ex-Microsoft. Pilot.
- Pilots make good instigators. Scaled Composites, Spaceship One, Burt Rutan. Pilot.
- Pilots (sometimes) make good rabble-rousers. The world land speed record is held by Andy Green who drove a car called ThrustSSC past the sound barrier in 1997. The team was run by Richard Noble, who raised the money and won tens of thousands of supporters for the project. Pilot. He should also consider some of the great writers and journalists who are pilots, including James Fallows, William Langewiesche and, I believe, James Surowiecki.
So, Seth Godin, if you’re ever in the UK, let me introduce you to some of these wonderful pilots and let me take you up for a proper flying lesson.
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