Mission Driven Strategy and Operations

Before I left Seattle a year ago, one thing stood out on my Pacific Northwest bucket list: fly a plane. I’d been tipped off that a local Intro to Flight class was $100, and the class included an hour of flight time with control of the plane.

I scheduled my intro flight on a clear day hoping for good visibility on what might be a once in a lifetime occasion. With a short (too short?) safety training and a brief (too brief?) pre-flight checklist behind us, my flight instructor, an eighteen year old from Minnesota, started explaining the rules of aviation.

“There are two ways to fly,” he said, “the first way, is to fly by sight.”

“Got it,” I nodded, “assuming that’s our way today?”

“Ya,” he said.

“What’s the second?”

“By instrumentation. That way you can navigate uncertain circumstances like darkness, or stormy weather. And you can chart a longer or higher flight path for approval. Without instrumental training, you can only go so far.”

I looked down at the info pamphlet I had and corroborated this information against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) guidance:

• Visual Flight Rules (VFR) govern how to pilot by using visual references outside the cockpit. To fly in VFR conditions, the pilot needs to see the horizon, the ground, and to stay out of the clouds.

• Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) are used when the weather is below that of VFR or when flying at or above 18,000 feet (Class A airspace). To fly under IFR, the pilot needs to hold an instrument rating and be on an IFR flight plan.

We took off with Mt. Rainier in sight and flew a gorgeous route in the smallest plane I’ve been in, a Diamond DA40. As we flew over Bellevue, I looked down to admire how the world looks like a miniature train set with the a feeling of preconceived motion from above. I took control as we flew over Lake Washington and headed east to Snoqualmie Falls with soaring views of the Cascade Mountains filling the cockpit windshield.

After we circled the falls, the instructor joked, “Want to try practicing an engine stall?”

“Next time,” I laughed, nervous he might be serious.

We flew back to the city and closed out by circling the Space Needle, waiting our turn and watching as the Seattle control tower asked us over the radio whether we saw the other approaching planes to ensure correct sequencing and avert disaster. Even though I had been prepped with awareness of what flying by sight would entail, I was surprised to literally be looking around for planes (and grateful that I wasn’t the one with control at this point).

After we landed and I got my certificate signed with an attempted upsell for a full pilot training course, I snapped a pic and left.

A year later, I’m still thinking about the two types of flight rules and reflecting on the parallels between building mission driven organizations. In my view, successful early stage organizations often “fly by sight” using an emergent and iterative strategy. They look around constantly at their external environment, searching for opportunities, threats, and determining their end goal (i.e. Space Needle).

Much of this is strategic — it’s important to fly by sight as you’re building out an organization since it leaves room for opportunities to evolve and even for destinations to shift based on continued iteration. Flying by sight also leaves room for significant learning before charting an efficient course — at first, the maps are unclear and the equipment may not even be installed, let alone optimized.

As mission driven organizations grow and instrumentation matures, the emphasis increases on formalized navigation tools like a refined mission, objectives, and key results. Operational attention shifts towards calibration tools like financial reporting, key metrics, internal wikis, culture surveys, growth and performance systems, and an effective tech stack. These navigation tools set the flight path and calibration tools align on a steady course — they serve to answer questions like where are we going and how will we get there from an operational standpoint. Financial reporting instruments and dashboards also serve to show how much fuel is in the tank along the way.

As is the case with flying, instrumentation tools support organizations to fly higher and farther — and even navigate stormy weather if accurately calibrated. These tools can also create increased transparency and support decentralized decision making – having everyone understand what the flight plan is and what indicators signal a need for course correction ensures alignment towards a shared end goal.

As growth continues, many organizations lean into these tools and primarily fly by instrumentation, coordinating using a predetermined strategic plan and related goals and metrics. With recognition of this fact, often the goal becomes to shift techniques to have a better pulse on the external environment and “fly by sight” again.

These cycles are often aligned with strategic planning cycles with the recognition for increased external focus aligning with a mutual understanding that effective strategic planning can’t be done without external inputs and validation or course correction.

As organizations mature, the goal ultimately becomes to hold these things in tandem and avoid the binary of one technique being superior to the other — what does it look like to fly by sight and fly by instrumentation simultaneously?

In other words, what does it feel like when both the external environment and internal calibration are in sync?

When organizations align these factors, that’s when they truly soar.

Resources:

https://www.flyingmag.com/guides/ifr-vs-vfr/

Snoqualmie Falls. Photo by Michael Denning on Unsplash

Space Needle. Photo by Toan Chu on Unsplash

Boeing Field Plane. Photo by Cody Fitzgerald on Unsplash