As a RSS subscriber of Seth Godin’s blog I came across today’s post and I couldn’t disagree more. I even feel that given Seth’s usual capacity this entry is completely sub-standard.
After the dialectically usual respect in the initial part about the importance of pilots, he sums up their job with:
They have to follow a myriad of procedures. They must be calm and focused and consistent, and yes, boring.
The he ultimately comes to compare their role to that of an employee in a “normal” company and concludes with respect to suitable hiring strategies:
We don’t need pilots. We need instigators and navigators, rabble rousers and innovators. People who can’t follow a checklist to save their life, but invent the future every day.
Yawn. I don’t believe I am biased because I am a pilot myself, at least a little-little one for leisure flying single-engine Cessnas. So I don’t feel offended for the pilots and I don’t intend to defend the pilots in the first place. However, drawing this comparison to a corporation is just simplictic.
Yesterday in Bangalore, I attended a learning event with Hema Ravichandar who was heading HR for Infosys during its growth from 250 people to 40,000 from 1992 to 2005. (I hope to find the time to cover more on this eye-opener in the next days here.) Her clear message: Better have average ideas have executed with excellence than excellent ideas have executed in an average way. Absolutely. I have seen a lot of very bright people, almost geniuses, in my professional life. And I have equally seen many of them struggling, because they were relying too much on their unquestioned brains, at the same time often falling into extended holes of entire absence from discipline.
Another famous saying goes: 20 % of success is inpiration and 80 % transpiration. Certainly, we need creative people climbing over walls or even just run though them. Let’s call them disruptive innovators. But at the same time we need smart people who are able to develop things with critical reasoning along the way, yet display a steadfast and reliable “get things done” attitude.
Seth, ever done the entry test for professional pilots? I did in 1992 for Lufthansa, and I recall these two days in Hamburg one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had. Covering various tests in maths, science, English, listening, assessing, multitasking, vigilance – always and constantly under maximum time pressure.
My take on all this for HR in a “normal” corporation: We certainly don’t require only clones of one breed of people in an organization, but for three quarters of them the skillset of the pilot for me rather serves as an ideal role model.
Feeds
Ok first of all, I would like to consider myself as one of those “geniuses” you have met in your professional life. Ehem. Ehem ;-)
Secondly, I would like to say, in my line of work it is 20% inspiration and 80% PERSPIRATION!
Thirdly, I have never done a pilot test for flying or anything type of piloting activities…Nonetheless, in my humble genius opinion, a corporation needs a ‘well-mixed’ bag of people, from innovators, perspirators (me! me! me!) and also pilots. Of course, we keep our fingers crossed that all of the above are reliable and have ‘get things done’ attitude.
What can be disastrous, in my opinion, is when you have super brains with bad attitude, may that be single minded or simply arrogance.
Har. Did I cleverly disguised my mediocre self as a genius in my rhetorics? I surely hope so:-)
kiss kiss.