Averages Suck.

Fear averages.

Fear averages because of a story I've read a few times.

This is a true story. And I'm not the first one to tell it.

Before Top Gun was created and Tom Cruise and aviator sunglasses became synonymous with each other the United States Air Force faced a problem: its planes were crashing. How often were their planes crashing? Well, this one time 17 crashed in one day.

These crashes were occurring in a post-World War II time when the sky was calling for someone to take it and the United States needed to make sure it was the owner. So the whole multiple-crashes-in-one-day thing needed to stop.

In attempting to cultivate a solution a person came forward. His name was Gilbert Daniels.

Daniels attended Harvard. Since the Internet wasn't around when he did Daniels graduated from Harvard and learnt at least one thing before graduating and articulated it as such:

"When I left Harvard, it was clear to me that if you wanted to design something for an individual human being, the average was completely useless."

This was the mentality Daniels brought to the Air Force's problem. He thought it could help them from continuing to crash and burn. Daniels was right.

Turned out the cockpit of a US fighter jet was designed a specific way. It was designed for the average pilot.

Turned out the average pilot didn't exist. Not. A. Single. One.

And Daniels crunched the data. He did this more than once. But not a single average Joe existed among all the Joes that Daniels had data on.

This meant the design of the Air Force's planes didn't fit a single person. Sure, some people got by because they were close enough. But close enough wasn't good enough when dealing with expensive government equipment - oh, and lives.

So the United States Air Force started making planes with adjustable seating.

The crashes stopped.

See, looking for and trusting averages isn't a good idea.

Averages are a trap. And traps can get you stuck in monumental problems.

So how do we avoid the trap?

We consider and embrace the fact "average" isn't the only thing the trap goes by. Because that would be an average thing to do.

So how else might we refer to the trap?

Ordinary, usual, common, normal - these are good places to start. So let's provide ourselves some questions to simmer on:

How much growth can be garnered from ordinary?

Are usual data points capable of building tomorrow's successes?

When does "what's common" equate with "what's winning?"

Does normal have value?

Now, let's think of individuals - you know, the beings that get up each day with five things they know they need to do and end up going to bed completing one, two, 176 other things they weren't expecting to have to wrestle with when they dove into their morning coffee.

The randomness of life is proof that life isn't a fastball delivered right down the pipe where all you need to do is swing as hard and fast as you can.

Life is an off-speed pitch - a curveball - that comes at you one way sucking you into believing you know where it's going before dipping out of where you thought it would go.

Life isn't linear. So why would arriving at a solution ever need to be?

And why would we think people act in straight lines from A to B?

Why do we see people as balls dropped into an inverted triangular space where said people are helpless to the gravitational force of a brand that pulls them through a set of stages that can be easily articulated like the alphabet? Because that isn't reality.

Reality is people wake up thinking they know but almost never do.

Reality is the to-do list gets substituted for the to-do-now list.

Reality is choice can suck and people fear it.

People - like problems - are complex, diverse, defined by multitudes.

So how we communicate with and solve for needs to be made up of the "Wow, really?" the "Holy fucking shit that's a thing?" the "Yep, yep, YEP, that's definitely way better than using whatever Facebook has."

Often we look at problems and people and attempt to give them a K.I.S.S.

But problems and people deserve more than that. They deserve the complex. They deserve an appreciation and respect for the zig zagging, the detailed brush strokes, and the poignant and deep meaning moments that make up life.

Problems and people are never average.

Thinking they are means the work is going to suck.