Who packed your parachute?

This article relates to the themes explored in David Meikle’s new book, Tuning Up, in which he examines the influence of responsibility and control in relationships, and how different levels of responsibility and control affect productivity, quality, work satisfaction and stress.

You can find out more about Tuning Up here.

It’s available in Hardback here

As an e-book here

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For as long as I can remember I’ve been afraid of heights. Well, not so much the height itself but the impact after descending that height at speed.

In his entertaining book, Why Did the Policeman Cross the Road? Stevyn Colgan, retold a story that appeared in Stars and Stripes the daily paper for the American military:

“… In World War II, US paratroopers had a problem with the fact that, allegedly, one in twenty chutes failed in some way.”

A terrifying prospect, even without my own handicap.

But during World War Two paratroopers would routinely jump from much lower altitudes – 1000 feet - or less. Little time to untangle any cords that may get messed up for whatever reason.

The question for the US paratroopers was - how could they get the failure rate down to zero? Although 5% of parachutes had been failing, I doubt anybody was deliberately negligent in their packing or inspecting of them. Maybe the packer was in a hurry, maybe they'd had a bad day, or had a hangover. But it makes no difference. One way or another the packers weren't being responsible enough.

So, the answer was to increase the responsibility of those in control of packing the chutes.

Stevyn Colgan continued ...

“The solution was to require the packers and inspectors to regularly jump out of airplanes using parachutes chosen at random from the store. The quality of the packing then rose to 100% and stayed there.”[1]

That’s the power of aligning responsibility and control.

When your own life depends on how well you pack a chute, no matter how bad a day you’re having, you’ll pack your chutes correctly. There isn't a much higher responsibility than your own life.

So when we have others conduct business deals on our behalf, or when we have others negotiating own our behalf, we should ask whether they are as invested in the outcomes of what they're doing as we are?

Because if they're not, if they have another agenda, or just a bias or a distraction, and we can't align their interests with our own, then maybe you should pack your own parachute.

[1] Unbound 2016

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David Meikle, Author Tuning Up and How to Buy a Gorilla. Founder, The HTBAG Co pitch services, consulting and training for brands, marketing procurement and agencies.