CEOs REACHING FOR THE SKY
Our brains are getting smaller, despite the fact that we live in a civilisation that is the most advanced that has ever existed.
This alarming discovery was released in a study last year by paleontologists at Dartmouth College in the USA. What was most surprising is that this reduction in cranial capacity has only occurred in the last 3000 years.
Some conclusions were that, since the brain needs a considerable amount of nutrients and energy to grow and maintain, if we don’t use it, it tends to shrink in size over generations. This is particularly true when we look at other creatures in the animal kingdom. For example, most parasites like lampreys live in a very comfortable environment where all their needs are provided for by their hosts. Lampreys don’t have to think very much, so they accordingly have tiny little brains.
Although the size of the brain is not the sole determinant of intelligence, there are other indications that the humans of more than three millennia ago were pretty smart guys. Early humans had to have intelligence and abilities we just don’t need today. The average early human had to be able to hunt, find food, build a home, protect his dwelling and family from predators, plan ahead for the winter months when resources were scarce, make fire, invent his own tools, tend to his own wounds, settle disputes himself and deal with countless other challenges that modern humans no longer need to care about.
The fact is, in our modern “civilised” era we have all become specialists. We focus on our very narrow fields of endeavour and leave our other needs to be dealt with by other specialists. Instead of hunting and foraging for our next meal, we visit the local supermarket, or even just order our food online.
We rent or borrow to buy a home, which is built by contractors and specialist sub-contractors. If we are threatened by predators, we call the police or the security company. If our house burns down, that’s the insurance company’s problem. If the car breaks down, we have no clue how to fix it. Indeed, few people even own a toolbox, let alone can fabricate the necessary tools. We have maintenance plans and extended warranties where other specialists will deal with that.
If we need to remember things or do calculations, computers do that for us. If we want to chat with others, no need to trek for days through the wilds to engage with our friends and associates. We pull that smartphone out of our pockets and see and speak to each other within a couple of seconds. If we hurt ourselves or get into a dispute, there are doctors and lawyers to sort those problems out.
It’s little wonder we are growing smaller brains. Other than for the narrow purposes of our specialised careers, we don’t need most of that lump of mush sitting in its bony container above our shoulders.
Most of the world’s working population work for others, for businesses and corporations. Particularly in the cushy environment of larger corporations where medical care, pension plans, transport, a comfortable work environment, paid leave and the golden handcuffs of assisted loans provide for all imaginable human needs.
But what about the few who use their ingenuity to struggle up the corporate ladder from cubicle to boardroom?
The transition from the ordered corporate environment to the real world of cut-and-thrust, dog-eat-dog engagement within the wilderness of our modern “civilization” is a daunting one for the budding CEO. The need to swiftly assess and manage risk, assess the environment outside the office building – as well as having to make rapid and accurate decisions regarding potentially life-threatening scenarios, becomes paramount.
Human babies are born with an excess of neurons in their brains, about 100 billion of them. As the baby grows, neural pathways are formed by the process of learning, and the unused remainder eventually fade away as we age. This is why you can’t, “teach an old dog new tricks”.
This transition for young executives is one that has challenged corporations for a long time. Further academic education, as well as projects such as so-called wilderness leadership schools and the like have proven to be of dubious value. Walking a few trails, engaging with nature and sitting around the campfire with colleagues while drinking beer and singing Kumbaya may well introduce some novelty and team-building, but does little to galvanise those unused neurons into useful function – before they eventually atrophy and die.
It’s Time To Go Fly
It is not an entirely new concept, but there have been numerous studies and analyses that, statistically, CEOs who fly themselves make significantly better, more effective and successful CEOs. These studies point to historic business greats like Howard Hughes and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison as examples of highly successful CEO pilots. Elon Musk bought himself an L-39 jet and learned to fly it when he founded SpaceX.
It comes as no surprise that, when casually perusing a list of members of AOPA South Africa, that the majority are captains of industry, professionals and successful entrepreneurs.
So, why does learning to fly and obtaining a pilot licence appear to make for such successful business leaders? This aspect is something that the copious research and literature does not really address.
The answer is this: It introduces the business leader to a very novel and broad range of disciplines, knowledge, skills and concepts that fires up those hitherto unused neurons into pathways that are of immense use to the potential CEO who needs to face very novel and diverse challenges.
Not only is there the new knowledge and concepts that a student pilot must master, but also the simultaneous implementation of those mental systems – in a very different and frightening environment compared to just wandering on the surface of the Earth.
A new pilot has to learn a diverse range of novel concepts and write at least eight exams on those subjects alone. These range from engines and airframes, air law, meteorology, navigation and other subjects that, academically, seem to be unconnected with each other.
However, the practical experience of actually grasping the unfamiliar controls of an aircraft and competently guiding it through an even more unfamiliar third dimension pulls all that essential knowledge together. The mental parallels between flying an aircraft and controlling a corporate empire are remarkably similar. An error made by a pilot could well be his last. Similarly, a single error made by a CEO could have devastating and irrevocable consequences.
While learning to pilot an aircraft, the reality of certain death is never more than a few moments away, so just like for the CEO, decisions need to be made quickly, correctly and decisively. Decisions also rely on swift judgement based on a broad base of knowledge, information and skills, all of which are in themselves different disciplines.
Perhaps the most important similarity between flying and running a business is the ability to accurately assess risk in the face of many changing variables. All enterprises face a plethora of risks, simply to stay afloat. And any opportunities must be grasped before they slip away. In the cockpit, a pilot must similarly be proficient in assessing risk in order to stay in the air. Changing weather conditions, navigational uncertainties, potential mechanical failures, aerodynamic considerations and knowing the limitations of both the aircraft and himself are factors continually swirling around in the pilot’s mind.
For example, a pilot may find him or herself in rapidly deteriorating unexpected weather conditions. The instinctive tendency is to press on with the mission, hoping desperately that conditions will miraculously improve. Hoping that beyond that ugly line of clouds filled with lightning, hailstones and wing-shredding winds, the sky will be clear again.
Similarly, a CEO facing unexpected deteriorating economic conditions, filled with pandemics, wars and political instability will instinctively hide those unpaid invoices in the back of the cupboard and ignore the strident demands from creditors, all the while desperately hoping that the adverse conditions will soon pass and times will be good again.
Both of the above examples are all too often fatal.
This raises a corollary to the essential ability of properly assessing risk – and that is the ability to make effective contingency plans for unexpected events – and to act decisively on them when they occur, without dithering, hoping, praying or succumbing to the delusional magical thinking that those adverse conditions will simply solve themselves.
The pilot is trained to always leave several back doors open in case of something going wrong. Pilots learn to turn back from bad weather or divert to an alternate destination, to make precautionary landings if those options become unavailable.
The training environment for pilots is filled with realities that evoke primal fears of imminent death, notwithstanding that while under the watchful eye of a competent instructor, it is really quite safe. But the fear and trepidation inherent in learning to fly serves a very useful purpose: it burns those mental techniques and disciplines firmly into the connections between those hitherto unused neurons in the pilot’s brain.
Additionally, those newly-formed brain areas are kept alive and functioning efficiently through annual flight reviews, where an instructor will put the pilot through those exercises and focus on any weaknesses that may otherwise have been forgotten. This is unlike the non-pilot CEO, who may well have learned some of these tricks and techniques long ago at university or from other training courses. But through the years these skills likely will have faded away and be forgotten when adversity suddenly strikes. The need to keep those neurons alive and functional is very real.
So, the brains of pilot CEOs are bigger than those that CEOs who are mere ground-pounders – simply because they are using those extra neurons that would otherwise have died away – and their brains stay bigger because those neurons are regularly kept fit and exercised.
Local Company Takes Up The Challenge
I was thoroughly reminded of these precepts when I attended a gathering and luncheon at the South African offices of EPI-USE, a multinational software implementation company with many offices around the world.
EPI-USE has embarked on a project of putting seven of their up-and-coming executives through a private pilot training course at Lanseria Flight Centre. The seven are currently well on their way to achieving their PPLs, and are thoroughly enjoying the learning experience.
The project, which is based on the precept that pilot CEOs make for much better CEOs, is overseen by the SA EPI-USE CEO, Jonathan Tager, himself a fellow Mooney owner and pilot.
It was also a pleasant surprise that the event was attended by Tom Haines, the well-known editor of AOPA Pilot Magazine in the USA, as well as presenter of the popular AOPA Live video series. Tom, who retired from AOPA USA last year, thoroughly supported the programme and has been a great friend and mentor to AOPA South Africa since I first met him when he attended the IAOPA World Assembly in Stellenbosch way back in 2012. Since then, I have met again and again with him in Beijing, Chicago and Queenstown, New Zealand, as well as benefiting from his generous assistance electronically.
EPI-USE’s formally pioneering this concept in South Africa is refreshingly welcome news for the flight training industry in SA, which has been experiencing some challenges over the last few years. I will be addressing some of those challenges next month.