Page 42 - Never Fly Solo

CHAIR FLYING | 15
with devastating consequences that ripple outward, damaging
or destroying lives and companies. It happens—sometimes to
people not so different from you and me. We see it every day
in the paper and on the news. At crunch time in business, a
solid foundation of judgment and skill can mean the differ-
ence between success and catastrophe, and these qualities
aren’t acquired overnight.

WINGMEN NEVER “WING IT”

Lapses in judgment, inattention to detail, and just plain bad
decisions are frequently the result of “winging it.” We often
use this phrase in a positive light, as if to suggest that we are
sharp, innovative, and quick thinking, but the reality is that
you should never want to wing it.
In short, winging it means you aren’t prepared. In today’s
world, be it in a jet aircraft carrying a few hundred passen-
gers, on a sales call, at a construction site, or in a hospital
emergency room, there is no excuse for being unprepared.
Captain Sully and his crew didn’t wing it when they landed
Flight 1549 in the Hudson. Rest assured, they didn’t fly by the
seat of their pants! They knew precisely what they were doing.
And when at all possible, so should you.
The best way to prepare for any type of mission is simula-
tion, and the ultimate simulator is the human mind. Use it!
Mentally rehearse every mission.
When the first U.S. astronauts were training for the Mer-
cury missions in the early 1960s, all they had in the way of a
simulator was their brains, because no one had yet been to
space. According to Dr. Charles Justiz, a NASA space shuttle
instructor, the Mercury astronauts played out various emer-
gencies and flight scenarios on grease boards, because space-