WING TIPS

Many of us have parents or other trusted advisors who gave us advice when we were young to help us in our flight through life. It was because they were 'wise and all-knowing,' though I suspect it was more often, to keep us from making the same mistakes they had already made. My dad had his saying, and as time passed, I realized that his were a combination of being wise and his experience of having made mistakes.

One of his favorite sayings was, "William if you do your best, you'll do better than most because most people aren't going to give you their best. Most people aren't committed to excellence."

Of course, parents have your entire childhood to teach you how to commit to excellence, and in my case, it usually meant doing something over again if it didn't meet my parents' standards. There was no formal training program on how to become committed to excellence. I borrowed from the lessons they taught me and my own experiences to develop a reliable and consistent approach.

The P4 System

Today, I call it the P4 system because the four key components required to build a culture of excellence all begin with the letter P. "How original" you might be thinking, but simplicity does have its advantages.

The jet engines that power the P4 system are:

• PRINCIPLES- a homonym, a word that sounds and is spelled the same but has more than one meaning. The first is "a fundamental rule about how something works." The second meaning is "a guiding sense of the right conduct; an ethical standard or set of values. The key to having strong principles is to develop those that combine these two meanings as the foundation of how you will approach both your professional and personal life.
• PEOPLE- You'll need to surround yourself with the right people. You want people who are ethical, intelligent, positive thinking, and who share your fundamental values. You'll have a unique obligation to mentor the people you lead and to instill those guiding principles in them and the organizations you head.
• Flight PLAN- That great philosopher Yogi Berra once said, "If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else." And he was right! I've flown 18,773 hours during my aviation career, which equates to 782 days, 112 weeks, or over 26 months of living in the air. With that backdrop, I'll share one remarkable fact. I have never, not even once, taken off without knowing precisely where I planned to land. You've got to identify where you are going if you ever expect to arrive.  
• PERFORMANCE- Yes, all the component Ps are critically important, but nothing will happen until you perform. You'll want to develop a bias for action. As the captain, you have to take the controls and fly the jet.
  

A Reliable Approach

There is no one way to be successful but using the P4 system has worked consistently for me. More importantly, it has reliably helped countless others who have adopted and applied the complete steps.

My new book, The Flight to Excellence, does a deep dive into these concepts, and I'll also be using Wing Tips to provide more information here. Hopefully, you'll keep coming back for the ride.

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A QUOTE TO CONSIDER

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.”

-Josh Waitzkin

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