Four abandoned landings…
The other night I flew home from New York City. As we approached the city of Toronto, we couldn’t see anything. Toronto was nowhere to be found.
The city was entirely hidden in a thick, dense fog.
I watched the landing gear descend, the pilot asked the flight crew to prepare for landing, and we entered into the abyss.
A few minutes passed when suddenly with a roar of the engine the plane’s nose pitched up; the landing gear quickly disappeared, and we rapidly ascended back over the clouds.
The same thing happened three more times. Each time, the landing was aborted in the final few seconds. The pilot announced we would give it one last try.
I finally saw the ground just seconds before we touched down safely.
How many times, in business, do we head into the fog?
Airlines are the safest mode of transportation in history, and they’re never taking ‘risks’ as we’d think of them in business, but here’s what I’ve seen lately.
Most organizations are doing the equivalent of flying Wright Brothers-era planes.
Sure, they’re getting into the air and most of the time they’re landing safely. But they don’t upgrade, or invest in themselves because it can be costly to upgrade. They’ve chosen to keep relying on outdated instruments and hoping that their people are talented enough to compensate.
This is, at best, a very dicey strategy.
Many of my best clients have found success by looking outside to get new perspectives, and to see where their instruments are out of whack.
By doing so, they were able to operate in ways that seemed riskier (to those still using the antiquated technology), but were, in reality, much safer.
And of course, by doing so they’ve certainly opened up opportunities for much greater profits.
Take a moment and ask yourself – ‘How confident am I that the systems we’ve set up, and the strategies we’re pursuing, are the best ones for our company?‘
The lower your confidence in that answer, the more important it is to bring in some outside eyes to help guide you to your destination.
Don’t get stuck in a holding pattern unable to land.
If you’d like to learn more about how I can help your company update its flying systems, don’t hesitate to email me.
Over and out.
