Once upon a time in aviation, flight crews faced a culture of hierarchical command where it was considered disrespectful, if not insubordination, to question the captain’s authority. Doing so risked possible retribution.
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins asks, “Are you a hedgehog or a fox?”
The Hedgehog Concept originated from a line of the Greek poet Archilochus, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows ONE BIG THING.”
As the story goes, the cunning fox spends hours strategizing the perfect attack on how to eat the hedgehog. He continually tries and fails, as the hedgehog simply rolls into a shiny, spiny ball with each attack.
After days of the fox’s attacks, the hedgehog’s laser focus on one simple method of defense keeps it alive.
When I was a kid we’d started counting the moment we saw lightning strike. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one- BOOM, the thunder would roll through our neighborhood, shaking everything to its foundation.
When I read Gino Wickman and Mark Winter’s most recent book, Rocket Fuel, I thought, “What an apt metaphor for the roles of Visionary and Integrator.”
I’m a bit of a nature lover so for my weekly “Clarity Break,” I wake up early on Sunday mornings and walk in nature. One of my favorite things to do is to be peaceful and observe the proven processes of how nature works. It’s disciplined, has a rhythm, it is repeatable and scalable.
Most people know that pilots use checklists. Regardless of seniority, experience or hours logged in the cockpit, all safe pilots depend on multiple checklists at various times during a flight.
