Flying and Entrepreneurship (art. 2) - Managing the Monotony

This week I decided to take a week break from writing on Family Business to write the second article on flying and entrepreneurship.? All the clients I work with are entrepreneurs or families of founding entrepreneurs. ??I tend to gravitate to them for their intelligence, risk-tolerance, and ingenuity.?

However, many of the entrepreneurs I work with share a trait I have always struggled with, which is getting bored easily and therefore avoiding the non-exciting parts of business.? It is incredibly fun and exciting to acquire businesses, buy/build new facilities, generate organic growth, or ultimately sell an organization.? The challenge is in the mundane; the daily grind of dealing with customer complaints, disgruntled employees, taxes, HR compliance or any of the other thousand things an entrepreneur may have thrown at them on a day-to-day basis.

This week I began my training to get a commercial pilot certificate.? As a commercial pilot you are taught to be more systematic, more deliberate in your process and more exact in your flying tolerances.? Essentially, you spend more time in the mundane and monotonous as you work checklists, dig deeper into weather briefings, and deepen knowledge of airplane systems.? ??

So, what can pilotage teach us about entrepreneurship??

As a pilot, I’ve realized I tend to want to jump to the fun part (new airports, faster more complex airplanes, new terrain).? However, to get to the fun part, it is critical I have the discipline to work through the mundane.?

Entrepreneurship has similar pain points.? I often see entrepreneurs that get so caught up in the fun of acquisitions, new locations, new employees, or new divisions the mundane gets set aside for tomorrow.?

In flying, if you depart on a long-cross country flight without updating your navigation charts and airport data on your electronic flight bag you create unnecessary, preventable, embarrassing and potentially hazardous risk.? Imagine the embarrassment of landing at an airport to refuel, only to find out the fuel pump is out of service.

In business, if you embark on a strategic plan that calls for double digit annual revenue growth (primarily through acquisition) without formalizing human resources (because who likes to read HR manuals) you create unnecessary, preventable, embarrassing and potentially hazardous risk (i.e. lawsuit).? ?Imagine the risk of an unlawful termination suit because your company hadn’t formalized disciplinary actions for non-performance.?

In conclusion, in flying and in business, devout time each day to the mundane. At a minimum, the monotony will help you avoid turbulence on the horizon. Although, most likely, the monotony will help safeguard you, the people and things you care about. In those moments the time invested in the mundane is just as invaluable in flying as it is in business.

#Entrepreneurship; #flying; #blueskies; #tailwinds