Vroom vroom

I was on a flight recently. I know. Shock horror.

When something unforeseen happens, you need to work through it

I was on yet another flight recently. That’s more accurate.

Prior to this flight, I had had a spate of spectacular four-to-five-hour delays and cancellations, so when the aircraft started taxiing away from the stand with a mere 20-minute delay on the clock, I was so happy I could have cried.

And it’s a good thing I didn’t, because the joy didn’t last long.

We got into position and then our captain came onto the Tannoy to say we needed to return to the stand as something wasn’t quite right.

How often does that happen to us all, in life?

I don’t mean the plane getting ready to take off and having to come back to the stand. That one was a first, to be honest. For me at least.

But thinking we were done with a phase of work, a phase of our lives, a programme of work, only to find that we are not quite done at all… There is a little more work that is needed. A parameter was missed. Something doesn’t quite add up.

That part happens a lot, I’m afraid.

And at the moment in time when it happens, or it is noticed, the choice is invariably to go back to the stand and do the thing you now know is needed, or plough on ahead regardless and hope for the best.

Obviously, when it comes to aviation, that second option seems like a terrible one.

Which is what I kept saying to myself as the frustration mounted and the hours passed.

Yes, this is boring. Yes, I am tired and wish I was on my way home. But I’d rather make it home late than have a catastrophic failure mid-air, so I will take the delay and thank you very much Mr Pilot.

But ask yourselves, how many times over your career have you had to deal with the fallout of people who saw something going wrong at the 11th hour and decided to just hope for the best?

Nobody dies, obviously, we are in finance. Nobody dies as a result of a mistake or oversight, although people act like they may be about to, occasionally.

We act like everything is life and death but frankly, nothing really is.

The question is: do you take that reassuring fact to mean that a slight delay won’t matter in the grand scheme of things, so when you find something that may delay your project you should spend the time and money to fix it because in the long run that delay isn’t that big a deal?

Or is the right question: nobody will die, so going ahead with an oversight or omission and hoping for the best is actually OK?

When it came to the flight, I was glad, all told, the pilot took the time to fix whatever was wrong. I was frustrated and glad at the same time. Weird combo, that one.

More frustrated than glad when I could overhear the staff calculating how long their shifts had been and whether they were still allowed to fly after the issue was fixed. Because, of course, the plane may be fine, but if the crew are fatigued, your safety may be compromised differently and nobody wants that.

But pushing humans beyond the normal boundaries of endurance is a civilisational hallmark for our societies, isn’t it?

I remember back when we were in offices people jokingly asking, “Half day?” if anyone got up to go home around 6pm.

I remember people getting super-defensive if someone insinuated they hadn’t worked over the weekend. Or they hadn’t taken the redeye. Or they had gone to the gym at lunchtime. Or they had taken a lunchtime.

So as I was sitting on that plane, getting frustrated and worried that I wouldn’t fly that evening, the reality is the headlines would write themselves if we had flown and the neglected plane or the exhausted crew had made an unforced error.

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Only the people who create safety regulations for the airline industry have to think exactly that.

And, frankly, I hope that the requirements for newer and more resilient aircraft keep getting more onerous. That the airline and the ground engineers learned a lesson from whatever went wrong with our inspection. And that the crew maybe get to work slightly shorter hours so their exhaustion doesn’t become a factor.

Because I like being alive. I like it a lot.

I hope they learn and get better, to be honest. And keep learning every time something like that happens.

I hope that they do.

But I don’t know if they do.

What I do know is that we often don’t.

Each situation is treated as singularly unique, so history both repeats itself and it rhymes.

I dare you to think of a single project or programme of work you have had involvement in or sight of that didn’t entail finding an issue (human, procedural or technical) or oversight as you were entering the ‘last mile’. After you had told yourself… OK, we are good to go. I dare you to think of one project where you weren’t faced with a last-minute issue and weren’t tempted to go ‘let’s just risk it’.

That part is so mundane it doesn’t merit further discussion.

The real question is what happens next.

Because I would guess that the times that you risked it and got away with it taught you a terrible lesson.

But also, the times you risked it and didn’t get away with it, you might have got a slap on the wrist, perhaps, but then you got to be a hero, which is an equally terrible lesson.

And then the times you communicated to your stakeholders, like our pilot, that an issue has come up and you’ll take the time needed (no less and no more than that) to ensure it is not a critical defect for everyone’s comfort… or bottom line and market reputation… you probably got stern looks, disappointment and frustration over a period of days or weeks.

And weirdly, although the first two scenarios would be soon forgotten, going through the appropriate channels to communicate a delay will probably be remembered for a weirdly long time as a lapse in judgment of those who did the early planning. Or those who ended up having to communicate the issue. A terrible outcome which probably also teaches a terrible lesson.

And all the while you are too tired and your team too overworked to be philosophical about it.

So what do you learn from it all? All the worst lessons, and as we are historically terrible at absorbing long-term lessons in our industry anyway, you probably never measure the cumulative impact of these learned behaviours.

But what can you do instead, I hear you ask?

It’s rather simple, really.

First of all, front-load your checks. Kick the tires hard, early. Again and again.

Then, make sure you don’t overwork your team so their minds are alert and sharp and likely to catch things in a timely manner.

Then you see something isn’t right, call it and fix it.

And if you are a stakeholder, think about the long-term impact and check your frustration.

As we were sitting on that flight, waiting, chafing, angrily typing ‘don’t wait for dinner’ into phones, a small boy was sitting alert, looking to see the engineers as they came in and out of the cockpit.

He nodded with great seriousness every time he saw them. I see you, you are working, said his face. I am invested. I am here. Not rushing you. Not delaying you with constant demands for updates. But present and engaged.

He didn’t cry and he didn’t ask any questions after his first set of ‘what?’ and ‘why?’ and ‘how long?’ were answered with ‘technical error’ and ‘because we need to be safe’ and ‘we are not sure as the engineers need to work out the root cause before fixing it’.

He sat there, and every time an engineer stepped into his line of sight, he said ‘vroom vroom’. All encouraging-like.

It wasn’t meant to rush them. It wasn’t pushy or annoying. He just said it to show he was committed to the process, engaged and anticipating the next step.

It changed nothing, but it made us all feel better.

The small child got it.

That when something unforeseen happens, you need to work through it. And although speed is of the essence, being able to vroom vroom to our destination was always the aim, so do what you need to so we can vroom vroom as soon as possible, but no sooner than that.

The small child got it.

There is hope that your senior sponsor will too.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. 

Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.