Aviation of Business

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on May 29

I haven’t done this in several months (though I did post on the first one ever - in the comments sections of the post itself), but I think it’s a good idea and a great way to reflect on what one has learned in the past month (and if you can’t say that you’ve learned at least five things in a month, no matter how trivial it seems to you, there’s something wrong with you!).

 So, in the manner laid out by the Joyful, Jubilant Learning Blog, here are my top five “learnings” for the month of May:

1. No matter where you are, no matter what you think, you have friends near you.  My wife and I were at a beautiful wedding over Memorial Day weekend in Clearwater (Dunedin), Florida.  It was the wedding of a very good friend of ours who Jill met while working in Theatre in Columbus, Ohio (and who now lives in New York City, NY, but whose family is still in Florida).  We didn’t expect to know anyone at the wedding or the reception except the bride and groom themselves (whom we expected to be rather busy, for some reason); however, once we got to the reception, we were almost immediately approached by two other couples who knew us (though we didn’t know them immediately).  It turned out that Jill had met the women while they were the bride’s roomates in college!  And at the end of the reception, one of the bridesmaids was another friend of the bride’s whom Jill had met previously!  Another of the joys of networking… in Florida, we ran into people who we knew from Columbus, Cincinnati, and Kentucky!
2. A business can survive through almost any length of “down season” if the “busy season” is busy enough!  A small shop in Clearwater, FL makes 1/2-pound cookies and homemade ice-cream - and was pretty much empty except for while we were in it (eating a chocolate-chip cookie with two scoops of vanilla ice-cream and hot-fudge on top… whoa!).  The man behind the counter said that spring break is always his best time.  Planning ahead for the rest of the year is of utmost importance!
3. Related to the above, a business can survive without a business plan or without good leadership if it’s in the right location.  If you serve alcohol and pizza, and are located on a beach where college students frolic during spring, you could leave your business i the hands of a monkey and still survive.
4. Love bug season in Florida SUCKS.  Those damn bugs were EVERYWHERE and they were ANNOYING!  Jill and I took to calling them “Fuck Bugs” for two reasons - 1) they were fucking, and 2) we were constantly saying “Fuck, bugs! Get away from me!” I buried as many as possible in the sand, alive. 
5. Business is just breaking down a large “problem” into small, actionable parts.  The “problem” is your business and the small, actionable parts are your goals and plans to reach where you want the business to go.  This is basic - but I constantly need a reminder of it.  I’m reading Robert Allen’s Multiple Streams of Internet Income, which breaks down internet business quite well.  I’ve already taken 13 pages of notes and I’m not even halfway through it.  I’ll buy a copy for myself (I’m reading a library copy) so I can highlight and underline and take notes in the margins…

Hope you enjoyed this, and I encourage you to do the same thing on your own blog… (what?  You don’t have a blog?  Leave a comment on this one or on JJL’s!)  or at least in your own head so you reap the benefit of reflecting on the month behind you!

Next post will be back to our regularly scheduled programming (the sacred six flight instruments & how they relate to business)!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on May 20

 The Directional Gyro - a.k.a. Heading Indicator - is used by a pilot to determine an aircraft’s heading.  It actually uses a gyroscope, which allows it to maintain its position in space as the aircraft “rotates” around it.  This allows the Heading Indicator to always show the correct heading to the pilot. 

Why not use a compass?  All aircraft are equipped with a standard magnetic compass as well; however, these compasses are nearly impossible to use while maneuvering.  Want to experiment?  Grap any free-floating compass (in an aircraft they are actually liquid filled - they used to be called “whiskey compasses”), then manuever it like an aircraft turns, leaning (or “banking”) it to the left as you turn it left (or leaning it to the right as you turn right).  See how the compass doesn’t want to “lean” with its container?  This causes false readings during turns or accelleration/deceleration.  The Heading Indicator doesn’t suffer from these limitations.

So what does this have to do with business?  Well, Mahesha hit it right on the nose in her comment to last week’s post.  All business is planning - just like aviation.  You plan your flight - you plan your business (or at least you SHOULD).  To have a successful flight, you need to know ahead of time where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.  It’s the same in business (and anything you do in life) - as Lawrence J. Peter said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”  So the heading indicator helps a pilot who knows where she is going make sure she is still on course to reach her destination.  Just as a business plan helps an entrepreneur get where he is going.

Let me clarify before I end this post - if a pilot does not look at the heading indicator, it doesn’t do him any good.  On the same token, if an entrepreneur doesn’t go back and reference her business plan to make sure she is still on the right track with where she wants her business to go and what she wants her business to be, it won’t do her any good either. 

Other ideas?  What do you see as YOUR “Heading Indicator?”  Tell us by leaving a comment!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on May 12

So - comparing running a business to flying an airplane is a pretty big stretch, huh?  It’s all really a crock - I’m just trying to link two of my passions together so I can feel like when I’m doing one I’m not ignoring the other, right?  For the last three or nearly four years, I have not been in an airplane that I was flying myself, so I have really stretched the limits of feasibility to convince myself that I have not actually given up flying for so long.  I’ve actually been keeping it in my head and using what I learned through my pilot training to help me start and run my businesses.

How’s that sound?  Convincing?

Because it’s crap.  Aviation and business are strikingly similar - and the next six posts will help convince anyone skeptical (and will help me gel my thoughts about the subject for myself as well).  So keep in tune over the next few weeks as I post about how each of the “sacred six” instruments in an airplane coincide perfectly (or nearly so) with ways that people judge the performance of a business.  The pictures below are examples of the “sacred six” instruments… take some time and think about how they help a pilot better understand the performance and activity of her aircraft - and how they might be similar to the way business performance is judged.

I’ll post again soon and explain one of the above instruments.  Leave some comments if YOU have ideas about how these instruments might tie into typical business performance tracking!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on May 5

An airplane is an amazing piece of machinery.  During some portions of a flight, it is required that the pilot make large changes and major corrections to the path of the aircraft.  Takeoff and landing are obvious places where this comes to mind.  This is called “hand flying” the airplane.

At other times, however, it is unnecessary to “hand fly” the plane - during straight and level “cruise” flight for instance.  During this phase of a flight, the pilot will use what’s called “trim” to make very slight corrections to the flight path of the airplane.  If the plane is descending slightly, the pilot will use “nose up trim” to stop the descent.  If climbing slightly, “nose down trim” may be used.  Some aircraft have trim for rolling (aileron trim) and turning (rudder trim) as well.  Keep in mind here that I am not talking about any kind of “auto-pilot;” this is just a way to more carefully and precisely control the plane once it is in “cruise” flight and flying at a single altitude and in one direction for a length of time.

This can be likened to a business (as always!).  At some points in the life of a business, like during the startup and initial growth, it is necessary to “hand fly” the business - you as an entrepreneur (pilot) must “control” the business more directly and make larger changes to its direction.  In an airplane this is during takeoff and climbout and only lasts a few minutes.  In business, it may last a few years. 

Additionally, if you plan on selling or in some other way “exiting” the business, you will, again, need to “hand fly” for awhile.  You may not be “hand flying” the business directly, but you will be directly and significantly involved in the process of finding a buyer and negotiating a fair price for both of you.  This roughly coincides with the approach and landing of an airplane - again a time when the pilot must be significantly involved in the aircraft’s control. 

Most other times during a business’s “flight,” small corrections and tweaks are all that is necessary to keep the company moving in the direction you want it to go.  This is, of course, assuming you have a good business plan (flight plan) and a good team (crew).  You also must be in a well-designed company (stable aircraft).  See my post on Tradeoffs for more on business design and aircraft design.

There ARE times during cruise flight when a business (or an airplane) DOES need to be hand flown - any time a change of direction is necessary.  In aviation, it is all about navigation or avoidance of other aircraft (which are subjects for other posts), and in business it is during times of change, when a new direction is needed to grow to the next level or to outmaneuver competition.

Times to hand fly an airplane / business:

• Takeoff / Startup
• Climbout / Initial growth phase (combination of trim and hand flying)
• Change in direction / New business opportunity
• Traffic avoidance / Response to competition (can be proactive or reactive)
• Initial descent / Considering exiting (combination of trim and hand flying)
• Approach to landing / Decision to exit made (combination of trim and hand flying)
• Landing / Exit of business (sale or other exit strategy)

The reason it is important to understand this is that is is possible to “hand fly” an aircraft (and a business) when it should be “trimmed.”  It is very easy to “overcorrect” when you hand fly an aircraft during cruise flight… this will cause large changes in altitude and direction because the pilot feels the need to directly control everything the aircraft does with relatively large control movements.  But in a stable aircraft, small adjustments with trim allow the plane to “fly itself” - and that is exactly what aircraft (and businesses) should be designed to do.