Word Allergies

Originally posted February 3, 2007

My years in the aviation industry have been evenly split between time in the cockpit and time behind a desk – over 15 years of each. In my desk-life, I have worked in management for some of the most successful companies in aviation – SimuFlite, FlightSafety International, Bombardier, Raytheon, Hughes Aircraft, and General Dynamics. I not only learned a lot about being a pilot, I learned about business. What I have learned makes me believe that sometimes they are not compatible.

Imagine, for example, sitting in a business meeting with your boss and coworkers. The boss asks if the project you are responsible for will be finished on time. If you answer “No”, the results are not likely to be pleasant. The same is true if you say “You will have to wait.” It seems that in our results-oriented business world, you need to develop an allergy to words such as “no” and “wait”.

At work, these allergies can be the key to success. They help keep things moving and ensure high levels of performance. Once successful business people move to the cockpit, however, those allergies start working against them. Now imagine a passenger asking the businessperson-pilot if they can still get to their destination in the marginal weather they are faced with. Given the behaviors that have made him or her successful at the office, that pilot may have a hard time saying “no, we will wait”. What is necessary for success in industry can be the recipe for disaster in the air.

Last year, AOPA surveyed almost 6,000 adults between the ages of 25 and 60 who were not current pilots or students to determine their interest in learning to fly. What they found was there are more than 3 million Americans in this demographic who answered they would be “very interested” or “somewhat interested”. The most likely individuals are married with children and fall between the ages of 40 and 49. They have an annual income of more than $100,000, they are college educated, and almost a third are self-employed. They are described as take-charge, professionally successful, extroverted, and intelligent. They describe themselves as eager to learn, reliable, independent, and hard working.

You don’t get into the demographic AOPA describes without being successful – in business. Our challenge is to make sure that those word allergies that made them successful in the meeting room don’t get in the way in the cockpit.

Fly Safe,
Neil