Dear founder. I am extremely exhausted today. I keep sleeping while writing this…
I worked through the night yesterday, slept 3 hours and still jogged 10km as part of my training to cycle 3000km from Musina to CT.
But I have a commitment of writing everyday. And in fact, this brings us to todays topic.
You are a pilot, almost at 10,000 flying hours. Like any other day, your plane is full of passengers. You taxi to the right runway, flick a few switches and get ready to take off. Traffic controllers give you the green light, and you push the engine levers forward. The plane roars into life and you feel the seat pressing on our back.
The plane gathers speed and suddenly, there’s an explosion. Lights flicker and alarms go off. One engine has failed. What do you do next? Do you abort, or do you continue taking off anyway?
The point of no return
Commitments like quitting a job, firing someone or getting on a roller coaster all have a point of no return. But what happens when something goes wrong? Do you fire someone and then say, “oh no! I just found new facts – you are not fired anymore.” Do you resign and then say, “sorry, I want to take that back?”
In aviation there’s a method for dealing with this problem – it’s the concept of V1 and V2 speed. V1 speed is the maximum speed at which a pilot can still abort take off. When the co-pilot announced V2, then there’s no turning back. Even if the engine falls off, you still have to take off (and hopefully swing around and land the plane).
Fight of Flee?
Let’s apply the aviation analogy for your business. Is there a point in your business where you would be willing to abort? Or do you keep going no matter what happens? I developed a little theory about this.
Here you go:
Startups are V1 speed. A business is a startup until it has a sturdy flow of customer and cash-flow to take care of itself. Until you get to this point, change your plans as frequently as possible. In the lean method they call it Iterating.
When your business has more than 10 employee and customers, changing plans creates immense challenges difficult. You might spark a riot. Hence, change plans must be more subtle, measured and calculated.
The next question is, how do you management change? I have some resources, which I will be happy to provide. Please write back and let me know what you think about this topic.
