Five-Niner Hotel, My ride for these flying lessons.

My flying lesson the day I wrote this was one takeoff and landing after another for over an hour, in gusty wind. That is some extreme multitasking to takeoff, climb, turn, radio calls, level off, turn, power down, descent angle, flaps, turn, more flaps, final turn and you are heading back down to the runway (or in some cases missing the runway) already.

Then it’s power back up and go again. Intense. I do not have this dialed in to say the least! It was a tough challenge to work on those skills as an incompetent beginner. Frustrating!

My instructor was very encouraging that this is a normal feeling after this lesson. Reminds me that one of the requirements for growth in any area is to be willing to do things poorly at first.

I can put a big sloppy checkmark in the “did something new poorly” box today! Your turn.

P.S. I’m conducting a workshop at the CCDA Conference this week. The CCDA organization is a great resource for addressing poverty in informed and effective ways. Worth a look if you are interested in that topic.

Last week during a Q & A session an entrepreneur asked me “What personal qualities do you think have contributed the most to your success as an entrepreneur?”

I thought him wise to see a link between personal qualities and practical results. These came to mind:

Perseverance: A stubborn refusal to give up looking for a way forward. Upon reflection, I think this equates to a deeply held belief that there’s always a way, that no matter how blank the drawing board is now, a winning solution is in fact possible, it’s out there, it can be found.

Expertise: A specific, developed area of excellence to lean on. Mine was software development. Yours could be influential selling, team-building, accounting, etc. This is a relevant skill you put many hours into to really get good at.

Kindness: A genuine caring about the people your business touches and a sincere desire to treat them generously and fairly. It’s not only the right thing, it’s smart strategy. Yesterday’s assembly line workers and vendor reps might be tomorrow’s executives and partners. You’ll need the kind of trust kindness builds.

I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs at the University of Illinois yesterday. It was really cool for me to be among a crowd of people who launch and lead startups.

As I thought about what to highlight from ten years as a serial entrepreneur, I noticed that the hardest parts and the biggest lessons I learned were all related to human factors. These were things like wise hiring choices, tough firing conversations, trust and ethics in partnerships, the emotional drivers of customers, and what makes a high-performing team.

Being smart and working hard are valuable ingredients in entrepreneurial success, and they are not enough. The human factors take things like emotional insight, courage, honesty, kindness, and generosity to navigate successfully.

I’ve learned recently in my pilot training that 85% of aviation fatalities are human error in a perfectly good airplane. I think it’s the same in business as in aviation, the human factors cause most of the failures.

The difference is control. As engineers we control software and materials and processes. As leaders it’s totally different. We work toward goals we can’t achieve on our own, with people whose help we need and whose behavior we do not control.

As leaders we must learn how to seek mutual benefit and interact with appropriate emotional adeptness or we won’t be going far on anything other than a solo project.

The business model at the core of an organization is so vital. It’s what fuels the economic engine that powers everything the organization does. A powerful model at the core enables success in a way that great execution on a weak or unclear model cannot compete with.

What would your customers truly miss if your organization ceased to exist? What do they value so much they would be sad about no longer paying you for it? That’s the real gist of your business model.

If you spend too much time looking at what success will be like when you get there, and not enough time taking action, you probably won’t get anywhere.

If you spend too much time taking action and not enough time looking at what success will be like, you might get there and find out you are not where you want to be.

The second mistake is sneakier than the first, because all the effort and motion feels responsible and can create a long (even lifelong) illusion that you are getting closer to where you want to be.

When setting out in a rowboat, choice of destination and pulling on the oars are both make-or-break important.