Excellence at speed
A couple of weeks ago I spent some time with the UK's Royal Air Force aerobatic display team, the Red Arrows. I've watched them many times - some of my earliest memories are seeing them at air displays, so it was a real pleasure to be able to spend a day listening to their pre and post flight briefings, watch the display and spend time talking to pilots and ground crew about how they make something so difficult look so good.
Here are the main things I learned:
Practice makes perfect - they spend a lot of time practising. Apparently it takes a minimum 1500 fast jet hours to even be considered to join the team, but I guess even then it's way short of the oft quoted metric of 10,000 hours of practice to be excellent at something, so getting better is a continuous process.
Modesty and humility of all the people involved was really noticeable. This helps with the fact that they have to be critically honest with their colleagues. When theirs and your lives are in each other's hands, it focuses the mind to tell it exactly as it is. To listen to whoever might have some relevant input seems more important than anything else.
Being prepared for when things don't go to plan - and not being afraid to accept that things won't always go to plan. For example in the pre-flight briefing they did a talk through of a display assuming one of their number's aircraft had failed to take off.
The support team (engineers, technicians, photographers etc) is as (more?) important than the pilot who is the person at front and centre. The pilots certainly seemed to realise this and as a result I'm pretty sure they get more from the support team. The support team know that they are more important as well but as this is clearly recognised by the pilots, are very happy to give their all.
Is this excellence? Yes - practice, modesty, humility, listening, resilience, are all qualities fundamental to excellence.
And if these people can do all this while at 350 knots, pulling 8G, flying 12 feet apart, then how hard can it be for those of us who are simply 'flying a desk'?
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7 年Nice piece. In my experience the best colleagues are those eager to receive frank feedback as well as give it. Corporate communications isn't a 'life in their hands' occupation but it's certainly a 'reputation in their hands' one so I can see your Red Arrows lessons have wide relevance.