Learn, Share, Grow – Principles of Personal and Organizational Flight

Below is a lesson from LinkedIn on the principles of personal and organizational flight, as well as our key learning.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

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Principles of Personal and Organizational Flight

Published on Published onFebruary 25, 2018

Andy Cindrich

As I sit on this Boeing 737 on my flight from Los Angeles to Hawaii, I am amazed (as I am every time I board an airplane) that something this big can fly. It’s astonishing that something weighing in the neighborhood of 300 metric tons can begin motionless on the ground at LAX, then lift-off and ascend to somewhere close to 36,000’ over the Pacific Ocean. The plane also withstands the occasional buffetings of wind shears, overcomes significant 100+ MPH opposition from the jet stream, and does so for 5 and ½ hours, until landing smoothly in Hawaii.

As with every sort of achievement, movement, progress, or overcoming of obstacles or resistance, this flight is governed by principles. The people who design, engineer, build, and fly airplanes understand and apply their knowledge of the governing principles of flight to their endeavors and in so doing they make their living. Those governing principles are gravity, lift, thrust, and drag.

As in flight, so in life and business, there are four principles that govern personal and organizational flight. If we are serious about moving from where we are to where we want to be, we have to align to these simple governing principles of human performance: focus, leverage, engagement through measurement, and accountability.

Continue reading, click here.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/principles-personal-organizational-flight-andy-cindrich/

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Key Learnings:

• To make an airplane fly, The people who design, engineer, build, and fly airplanes understand and apply their knowledge of the governing principles of flight
• 4 principles that govern personal and organizational flight:
  • Focus: Those who achieve extraordinary results are able to focus their attention and their efforts on a few critical objectives that are aligned with a meaningful vision of where they want to go, who they want to be, and what they want to have and be able to do.T here will always be more good things to do than we have time and energy to give and spreading our attention and efforts across too many worthy pursuits is the surest path to mediocrity and unfulfilled dreams.
  • Leverage: We have limited time each day to do stuff that matters. Consistently acting on the things that move us from where we are to where we want to be, provides personal and organizational leverage. This life leverage requires the right behavior and the proper consistency and quality to get things moving.
  • Engagement Through Measurement: Engagement is about creating an environment that moves people (including ourselves) from excuses and compliance to the commitment that produces innovation and progress. The highest levels of engagement and motivation come when “winners” see data that shows them the “score.” We can overcome adversity and competing priorities by tracking performance on our goals and the activities that predict goal achievement.
  • Accountability: Right in the middle of the word accountability is the word “count.” People on our teams, in our organizations, and in our families are counting on us to be at our best in the roles we play. Accountability is a human performance mechanism that helps draw out of us the very best effort we have to give.
• Newton’s first law of motion states that a body (object, team, organization, or self) continues at rest or in uniform motion (mediocrity or even poor performance) until it is acted upon by a force. That “force” at work and in our personal lives is time, thought, and activity devoted to forward movement.
• Newton’s second law of motion states that the rate of change of the momentum of a body is directly proportional to the force applied. While intent to improve provides an important starting point, to increase the actual force applied to our work and life objectives, we need to focus on a few critical priorities, find the leverage that produces the most movement with the least effort, engage fully with the help of measurement, and create a regular rhythm of accountability.