Chasing the Needle
I used to spend a lot of time in aircraft. From 1983 until 2003 I flew helicopters and airplanes for the U.S. Army and as part of our training we regularly practiced flying with our instruments only – without cues from outside the cockpit.
What many folks may not know is that the skies above us have well-established “highways” for aircraft, defined by a network of ground-based navigational aids that emit signals for pilots to follow. Basically, tune the frequency of that aid into your cockpit equipment and follow the needle. It’ll lead you to a point directly over that point where the aid sits on the ground. As you pass that turn point, you either track from the aid, now behind you, on a different course, or you tune and start following another aid on another frequency until you get to where you’re going. I hope you get the picture.
There are lots of potential lessons one might apply from this experience as we’re metaphorically “flying blind” in this current interruption, but we’ve started to see a phenomena in decision-making that reminds of what happens in flight when you’ve finally gotten really close to that navigational aid you were tracking for the last gazillion nautical miles. The needle pointing the way begins to swing erratically.
Inexperienced and uncertain pilots often react to that swinging needle by turning the aircraft, only to see the needle swing dramatically in a new direction. Turn again. Needle changes. Turn again. By now, if you’re the pilot on the controls, you’ll have gotten a healthy dose of “stink eye” from your co-pilot. You’re “chasing the needle.”
Knowing that the uncertainty in your course is going to change dramatically the closer your are to that navigational beacon, the appropriate action is to simply hold what you’ve got. As the needle bounces back and forth, a good pilot gets a sense for the corrections, in aggregate, that need to be made.
You leaders are piloting your organizations. The “needle” is bouncing erratically as we take in new information on our current situation on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. Making dramatic decisions about your business, we believe, is like chasing the needle.
I read some articles earlier today from credible sources who suggested that our current day-to-day is unprecedented and that we shouldn’t expect to rely on our past experiences and established approaches to decision-making – that they don’t apply here. To that, we say, “hold on a darn minute.”
Only time will tell whether what we’re experiencing generates a new normal (or not). There are certainly lessons we’re learning and will learn along the way (like always). But please. Now, we believe, is not a time for radical course changes. Let’s stop chasing the needle.