Leading to New Heights

February 6, 2023?

Dear Leaders,?

The last new Boeing 747 rolled off the assembly line last week.?After 54 years in production, the airliner known as the Queen of the Skies marked the beginning of its end, albeit that end won’t happen for another 40 years or more.?What distinguished the first of the Jumbo Jets was that it was a product not just of engineering genius, but leadership to envision something bigger and better and adapt to a changing marketplace.?

Juan Trippe, the head of Pan American World Airways, always envisioned something farther, faster, bigger, and better.?Seeing the success of jet airliners, he asked the manufacturers for more.?On a handshake deal, Joe Sutter of Boeing began designing the massive new airplane.?With the new aircraft on paper, the company built a new plant large enough to allow for the immensity of the plane, and the first one took to the skies in early 1969, with delivery to Pan Am by the end of the year.?Expected to have a 20-year lifespan, the project continued on for long thereafter.?

Long a pioneer in building large aircraft, Boeing was also a leader in being willing to take risks and derive solutions as they arose.?Dating back to the 1930s, they overcame engineering and budget challenges alike to design and build airplanes that became legendary in war and peace alike, not only for size, but also rugged durability.?For this project, they promised a two-year cycle from deal to delivery, something unheard of in the business, yet they were able to secure land, build the new factory, refine the design, and obtain certification on time.??

From the later 19th century and through the 20th century, leadership as well as engineering built great achievements.?Skyscrapers ever higher, dams ever taller, railroads and highways ever longer and over mountains and valleys, deserts and prairies.?Rockets leaving earth and headed to the moon and planets.?All of these took not only visionary engineers and designers, they also required great leaders who could see the future, and provide the direction necessary to solve problems as they arise and demand results through a sense of singular purpose.???

The world has changed, and the grand structures are still with us, but not as in days of yore, as 21st century leaders build as much in cyberspace and electronically as physically.?New developments in technology bring us from the polluting to the clean, and from the vexing to machine solving.?Yet like in days gone by, it takes leadership as much as engineering to make it happen. ?

It takes visionary leadership to build.?Engineers and designers put it on paper, electricians, metalworkers, masons, carpenters and others build it into reality.?Unfortunately, in today’s world, it also takes bureaucrats and multiple layers of management and government that are often more an impediment than anything else.?Leaders again need to see these challenges and know how to navigate through them via political savvy and building connections that can smooth a bumpy road.??

In all fields of endeavor great and small, leaders can provide vision and direction to make great things happen.?The measure is not in the awe-inspiring structure or achievement, but in motivating your people to do bigger and better things and realize that they are the grand structure for admiration. ?That which seems small in inception can become larger in reality, for what starts at a lower level expands and flows upward when properly managed and led.?Your success will impress others to do the same, and your demonstrated talent to make it happen will bring your own rise to the challenge to make it happen. ?

If you build it, they will come.??

Sincerely,

Tim