Episode 20 | Part Two: Dark Cockpit

Gregory Shepard, an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, TEDx speaker, and Forbes author. This is The Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard.

Welcome back to the second part of my discussion with Octavian Puntish, a bestselling author, speaker, and the co-founder of a training company based in Romania. Octavian, in the first part, we talked about how your company is preparing organizations for the new normal. But I want to shift to your new book called Dark Cockpit: How to Communicate, Lead, and Be in Control at All Times, like an airline captain. Tell us about the connection between entrepreneurs and aviation.

Yeah, there is a treasure of know-how in aviation about leadership, about managing a crisis, about communication. And I began researching that a few years ago by coincidence. And I, the more I learned about it, the more interesting and fascinating I found it. They're doing so many things that in business we don't see or we don't see at that level. And we thought, hey, because I wrote the book together with a very good captain, Emil Dobrovolsky, who's also a pilot examiner and a pilot trainer. So he, because of his role as an examiner, he gets to examine other pilots and gets to decide if they continue to fly or if they are grounded before they fix whatever. And he's also an Airbus international test pilot. So, he's really good. And we shared stories. And he took me behind the scenes in aviation. And we said, hey, we need to make this know-how available to people who don't pilot a plane, but who pilot a company or who pilot a team or who are students who want to pilot their career in the right way from the beginning, or just want to pilot their professional achievements. And there's so much there about leadership and about communication, about managing crisis. So that's, that's how the book came out. And the book is, it's a how-to book. So it's not a collection of stories from aviation. It's not the movie that Tom Hanks will play in and then he gets on a deserted island again or something. No, it's a how-to book. But we include stories and situations and principles from aviation. And then we draw conclusions. We build bridges into what the reader can take away and apply in their lives.

I find that really interesting because when I was building BOSS, the Business Operating Support System, to help these entrepreneurs succeed, I interviewed the fighter pilots, F-16, F-18 Viper pilots.

Yeah.

And talked to them. And this was a big, big part of it is the program that they go through to learn and move upstream and how they absorb information from the previous one. And it's— I agree with you 100%. It's fascinating. can be extremely helpful to entrepreneurs. How does one make the move from copilot to captain? There are 3 requirements, of which one is relatively easy, but the other 2 are very hard. Can you talk to that a little bit?

That's a big move in aviation. I mean, to become a copilot, you can, I can, at almost every age. Of course, less than 90 maybe. If you're healthy, if you see well, if you learn, if you study, you can get to that level. You can be trained and become a copilot. But to become a pilot, to become a captain, for somebody to give you on your hand, to make you responsible for a $100 million plane and even infinitely something more valuable, which is the lives of 100 passengers or 200 or 500, that's a big step. And there are 3 things usually. One is, of course, it needs to— it deals with the aviation skill. You have to be able to maneuver the plane and to have the knowledge and to know what's behind the scenes. And you have— there's a specific check, but that's okay because Because you can learn that, you can practice it. You spend hours and hours in simulators and you can take those steps. The 2 tough ones, they're tough. Number one is responsibility. You are responsible. So when from the moment the door closes, you're responsible for whatever is going on. Now, to put it into perspective, let me give the example of some people who rent a car for one day. Maybe they want to drive 50 miles that way, 50 miles back. And the guy at the cashier asked them, would you like the full insurance? And they say, Oh, of course. Yeah, I want the full insurance because they don't want to be responsible for a $10,000 car. Now, for a plane, you have to be responsible. And that needs to show not only in the fact that you sign, but in the fact that you sleep well before the flight and then you— and that you study the route and then you— and that you prepare and that you do everything. And some people simply do not want this responsibility. The difference in pay is not that big. I mean, of course, you make more money, but it's not like you make, I don't know, 10 times more money. So people say, hey, I want the final weight to be on the— or the big weight to be on the shoulders of the captain. So if some of our listeners are maybe, why did I not get the top job last year when it was offered to somebody else? Who knows? Maybe it was technical skill, but maybe technical skill was fine. Maybe you were a good manager or whatever. But maybe they did not see that seriousness in responsibility. So, that's a tough spot. And the second thing is then you have to be able to make good decisions even in very tough situations.

Mm-hmm.

Because if you rush into things, I mean, we've all seen movies with cockpits. We flew a lot. Maybe the door was— I think everybody, when you board a plane and you look to the left and the cockpit door is open, right? I guess everybody looks there and says, And some people are kind of scared. Oh my God, those hundreds of buttons and lights and what's going on. But some people look at it and say, oh, I wish I was there. So when bad things happen, when incidents happen, you need to keep your calm. People have to make sure that if you become a captain, you will keep your cool. And what they do, what captains do sometimes is they pull their seat back. So if there's an engine on fire and lights go off and alarms and noise and all that, they don't rush to make a decision. The expression they use in aviation is captains build their decision. You don't just take it. You don't rush into it. You build your decision. So you have to be able to—

Fascinating.

Within seconds, you have to be aware of what's going on, what has happened before. So let's just say that an engine was on fire and you luckily you were able to land safely. But now you have to evacuate passengers within seconds. But you cannot just go ahead and open all the doors because you have to say, hey, where's the wind coming from? Because if I'm sending out people And wind is blowing from the firing engine towards the door that I'm taking passengers out, they're going to run into flames. And then, so what's the situation? How many people do I have? So, you have to be able to take a ton of information into account when you make that decision. So, and I like the phrase, and I think our listeners will remember it, build a decision. It sounds maybe strange.

Yeah, I love that. Build a decision. I mean, you did 2 things, right? You talked about skill versus will. And you talked about building a decision instead of making a decision. You build the case and all of the circumstances and the if-thens that are associated with building your decision. And I know when I was talking to the Viper pilots about this, these guys are flying around a military-grade jet that costs, I don't know how many hundreds of millions of dollars with these large missiles on them.

Yeah.

So, these guys are in that decision where they're like, not only Is it their life and the object, the financial asset that they're flying? But also, if that plane crashes or if they launch the missile in the wrong place, I mean, you're talking about killing hundreds, if not thousands of people. So I can totally see why they have to have the mindset to still their mind and then sort out all the different options and build their next decision.

And if I may add a new dimension here, speaking of know-how in aviation, There's a procedure for everything, and pilots go into simulators at least twice a year for eight hours every time. So they go, they spend a lot of time there, and there's a procedure for everything. And to just to give an example of the value of the know-how in the aviation, in emergency landings or in situations like the one I briefly described, there's clearly described what needs to be done and who needs to do it. And the beauty is that none of the operational things that need to be done right away. I mean, pressing buttons, opening doors, and checking luggage compartment. None of that needs to be done by the captain. They're all required to be done by the copilot, by the crew, the flight attendants, by the tower. Why? Because they want— when they designed it, they wanted to give the captain the space, the mental space to build his or her decision. So it's the whole environment kind of Prepares the captain to be able to make the right decision. And in contrast with that, think about many entrepreneurs, and you've seen hundreds. When the going gets tough, when there's a crisis, who is the busiest person around? It's the entrepreneur, right? I mean, they're running and they're making phone calls and their emails, and they're talking to you about X, and they're talking to me about Y, and they're talking to 3 other people at the same time. And they have maybe 5 or 10 people around them who look at them and expect to be given tasks. You bring me a coffee, you go But still, the center is the entrepreneur. And that's simply not the best way to solve things because the entrepreneur, as wonderful a being he or she may be, is still— he or she is still a human. So, you cannot do everything. So, the notion—

Yeah, delegation, divide and conquer, right? Otherwise, if you try to do everything, you do nothing.

In aviation, it's called CRM, crew resource management. And 20 years ago or 50 years ago, a lot was on the shoulders of the captain. They know people noticed that some of the accidents, because at any given moment during the flight, one of the 2 is the so-called pilot flying. He or she is piloting the flight, and the other one is pilot non-flying, dealing with communication and observing and so on. And what they've noticed, and in many accidents, what did they have in common? It was the captain was actually flying the plane. And what did that tell them? Hey, Obviously, this guy or this lady had too many things to worry about. So CRM, crew resource management, came then and said, hey, if a flight attendant can do something rather than the pilot, rather than the captain, then the flight attendant will do that. If the pilot non-flying can do something, then they will do it because we want to give the captain the space. So the environment is there. They give the captain the space, but the captain needs to keep their cool. Another expression used in aviation is that as a captain, you need to be about 50 miles in front of the plane. So kind of anticipating what's going to happen, to look at the weather, to look at the clouds, to look at the landing environment and so on. And unfortunately, many entrepreneurs are not 50 miles ahead of their plane. They're 50 miles behind it. They're always reacting. We lost a customer. Oh my God, why? Let me find out. By the time they find out, they lose another one. And then money is flowing and then everything. So some entrepreneurs, and not only entrepreneurs, some employees in whatever job they have, sometimes they can be overrun by an One of the things that you need to do to be productive in aviation, also outside aviation, is you need to take control of whatever your job is. You need to, you need to not be somebody who's responding email all the time. What we say is that, hey, if you don't have a basic to-do list for your day, you don't need to worry because the world will provide one for you. All you need to do is open your email and it will easily take—

Yeah.

2 or 3 hours. And then you will get angry and you'll respond to that. You'll respond to that. And then you look at your watch. Oh my God, it's 2 p.m. already. I haven't done anything yet. And that's true. Yeah. You're not in control of your job.

I tell people all the time, I'm like, if you run your day, if you let your email run your day, then you're not running your day. So yeah, you need to take control of your day, not your email running your day, because your email is going to run you. It's like, you know, it's like taking your dog for a walk. And you know, the dog runs off in all different directions to whatever is the most exciting thing at that very moment. And that's how I think a lot of people run their day through their email instead of letting the email be a tool that you use. It is your business life. It's so ridiculous. I wanted to ask you one more question.

Please.

You mentioned this a lot about the accidents, aviation accidents, and you brought this up a few times just a moment ago. How can the entrepreneur prevent themselves from having these accidents? So if you're an entrepreneur, how do you look at this and say, okay, there are accidents that's going to happen. How do I forecast and sort of think ahead to prevent those accidents from happening in the first place?

Great question. Thank you, Greg. So what we know from studying aviation accidents is that there is never just one cause for the— or to the accident. It's never just, oh, the pilot was tired, or, oh, it was fog, or it was freezing.

No.

In fact, most aviation accidents are carefully studied and causes are being identified. And then the whole report has— and it takes years. What they found out is that in every crash, there were between 50 and 70 causes. That's 5-0 to 7-0, 50 to 70 causes. Big, small, but there are several causes. The biggest aviation accident in history happened in 1977 in Tenerife, and we describe it in the book a little bit, when a Pan Am 747 collided with a KLM 747 and hundreds of people died. Yeah, that was bad. I mean, 500— I think it was 583 people died. Now, why did that happen? It was not just one thing. It was tens of things. I mean, the planes were not supposed to be there. They were supposed to land on the main airport, but there was a bomb threat, so they were diverted to a smaller airport. Okay, so that's stress factor number 1. Stress factor number 2, that airport was not used to so much traffic, tens of planes. Number 3, when they listened to the recording from the communications, It seemed that in the background, in the control tower, you could hear a soccer match. So most likely people were following some soccer match, and maybe that took their attention away. And then when the collision happened, it was fog. And then they had to wait, and then they had to refuel because they were expecting longer flights. And because they refueled and took several tons of fuel more, it took more time for the KLM jet to take off. And this is why it collided with the Pan Am. Fuel on. The fire was much worse than if they had less fuel. So, there were factors and factors. So, what do we need to understand as entrepreneurs, as managers, as people responsible for it? If something doesn't turn out the way you want it to, we're quick to say, ah, the customer didn't like me, or the employee didn't care. No, no, no. Maybe that's true. But that certainly is not the only cause. So, what does the entrepreneur— what do we need to do? Look for more causes. Because if we just look at, oh, the end, That associate did not give his best. Okay, okay. Now, is there a guarantee that you'll find another one who will do his best? Who knows? But maybe that was not the main problem. So if there are 50 to 70 things or causes to something going bad, it means for something to go well and to prevent an accident, you need just as many. You need to be well-rested. You need to have done your homework well. You need to be in control of your day. You need to be nice to people because if you shout at them all the time, then they will not tell you the small details. that maybe makes a difference in whatever is going on. So, I guess the main message is that for every aviation accident, there's between 50 to 70 causes. So, whenever we think of our business, hey, that year did not turn out the way I wanted to. Oh, it was because of the crisis. It was because of the COVID Maybe. But for instance, think of COVID Okay. Oh, my business went down. I used to sell about 100 whatever. Now, we sold 20 because of COVID But I recommend it.

So dig down into root cause analysis, right? And find out exactly what the— I got you. I got you. I wanted to ask you another question. There's a famous quote in aviation, a superior pilot will use his superior judgment to avoid a situation where he has to use superior skill. What does that teach us? And why sometimes is too much talent a problem?

That quote comes from the following situation. You want, you want to land your plane. So to configure a plane to land, that takes about 30, 40 minutes, sometimes more, and you need to do 50 things. And there is a certain sequence in which you can do them. There is not an exact moment in which you need— there's an interval in which you need to do A, and there's an interval in which you need to do B, and so on. So the right thing to do is not leave them for the last moment. The talented pilots, the ones who are very gifted, and people who tend to be arrogant and show off, say, ah, I can handle this. So why don't I just— Do it all at once. Just chitchat with whoever, and because I'll deal with it. And maybe you're— maybe you will deal with it. But if in the moment that, or in this very narrow window you've left yourself to do 50 things, all of a sudden you need to do 10 more because maybe the landing is busy with something or you have some wind, surprising wind coming from the side, maybe you won't be able to get it done well. So what the saying says, hey, don't rely on superior skills. Don't just say, just because I'm in soccer Messi, or just because I'm Michael I don't need to worry the entire match because I'll sort it all out in the last seconds. Don't rely on that. This is never a temptation for the people who know that they do not have Michael Jordan's talent. But this tends to be a temptation. Yeah, yeah, right. Hey, I'm experienced. I've done— it's not my first rodeo. Let's just go in there and pitch the investors. I know what to say. I know what to do. Yeah, but who knows? Maybe there's something there that will— for instance, just to give you an example, I once heard from an advertising agency. They were saying it proudly. And so, they're saying, hey, sometimes we finalize our— just think about it. Sometimes we finalize our presentation slides in the car on our way to the office of a customer. And they were proud of the happy life and very vivid life that they were living. And in my mind, I said, oh my God! Now, for sure, that presentation, that slide deck is not your best work. For sure, something could have been that bad, could have been done better. So that's a temptation. The more talented you are, the more successful you tend to think of yourself that you can be, the higher the risk that something comes up in the last moment and ruins everything. And I'm glad you mentioned you brought it up because I think we should be aware of that temptation and resist it and do things one at a time in due time, not leave it for the last moment.

Octavian, I am so, so happy that you were able to join this podcast. I really, really appreciate it.

Thank you, Greg. It was a pleasure. All the best to you and to your to our listeners.

Until next time, namaste, my friends.

Learn more about the Boss Business Operating Support System at bossstartupsience.com, or you can reach Gregory Shepard at GregoryShepard. This has been a production of Forbes Books.