The Pursuit Of Success: Finding The Hole In The Clouds
How one bumpy flight became a metaphor for this journey called life.
September 16, 2015. We sat on the tarmac at Calabar airport, in an Embraer 135 jet, during one of our proving flights. Sidebar: a proving flight involves flying an aircraft from location to location to prove that your operations are locked and loaded. It’s a critical step towards getting approval for a commercial route. On this flight, it was just me, the 2 pilots, a backup pilot, 2 cabin crew members, and an aircraft engineer. It was about 11am in the morning and the weather took a sick turn out of the blue. From a beautiful clear sky with a scorching sun, to a dark and cloudy sky spitting heavy bouts of rain that was quickly approaching us.
Who is ‘me’? Seni, then Manager of Strategy & New Business Development. A newly minted MBA graduate whose singular goal was ‘to build something new and meaningful’ in Nigeria in my first job after business school. I landed a rare opportunity to lead the creation of a new business-focused airline for an old global business with operations in Nigeria. More on that story for another day.
Let’s get back to that day in Calabar.
The whole crew hurried back to the aircraft and I stayed behind trying to finalise a conversation with the terminal staff. One gentleman advised that I better get going right away if I had no intentions to sleep in Calabar. While that was an attractive option, I didn’t plan to get left behind. I dashed off to the airplane and the crew played a prank on me, beginning to move the aircraft like they were prepping to leave, door closed and all. I started jumping up and down and screaming, as if anyone would hear. Okay prank over. I got on board.
We started evaluating our options. We still had one more proving flight that day, but perhaps it wasn’t a great day to prove anything else. Do we fly back to Lagos (our home base) which had clearer weather? We didn’t have enough jet fuel for that, since it wasn’t the initial plan, and we would have to refuel here at Calabar airport. Sounds good. Oh wait, they only accept cash. Great. #ThisIsNigeria.
We emptied our pockets and ended up about N12,000 ($33) short of the amount needed, if I remember correctly. And we all know that in Nigeria, cash is King.
Do we travel back to Port Harcourt to refuel and then head to Lagos from there? Bad idea – the storm was even worse in PH so it wouldn’t be safe to fly there. The team asked me what I would like us to do. I had no clue. What did I know anyway? The most flight planning I had done was on the Flight Simulator game in our one-chance family desktop computer back in 1998.
I asked a few questions, did some quick maths and suggested we negotiate with the fuel vendor to pay them later, then fly back to Lagos. While negotiating, we found out that our company actually had a credit account with the vendor (sidebar: the company already had a different aviation business, hence the credit account). Why didn’t the fuel supplier just tell us that earlier? Did the big ass logo and text on the aircraft not already provide all they needed to know? I think we were all just so baffled by our dilemma that we didn’t think to ask. Anyway, credit trumps cash. We were good to go.
We refuelled swiftly and commenced our journey back to Lagos. We had about a 30-minute window to get out of Calabar before getting grounded.
Once we were airborne, the turbulence was extreme. On our usual proving flights, when we encountered turbulence, I would get giddy and start smiling at the cabin crew. In what is likely a form of self preservation, I hardly get fazed by anything. My wife finds it intriguing, and probably sometimes annoying when she thinks I’m just trying to be a tough guy. On the worst days of turbulence aboard Air France or Delta flights, I’d think to myself “wow so this is how it all ends”, chuckle and then look to the cabin crew for some reassurance that we’re okay. I know, this is kind of weird behaviour. On this very flight, on the airline I was building, the usually super-fun cabin crew seemed more stoic than normal, and that caused me to panic *a little*. Maybe more than a little.
I looked out the window and saw a few lightning strikes, which of course is just a normal day in aviation. False. In that moment, I thought back to my very fulfilling work at Bain, HP, CardinalStone and Konga, and began to imagine how and why my crazy ass decided to go build – of all things – an airline. But here I was, blitzing through the dark clouds in Nigerian skies, living my dream of ‘building something new and meaningful’. No way this was how I was going down in history. “He lived a good life”, they’ll say.
While spiralling down the rabbit hole of my own thoughts, the First Officer (aka Capitán – I don’t think he knows I call him that) went full throttle and sent us nose up plowing through the clouds. “Is he nuts?”, I thought to myself. It felt like an hour, but within a minute or less, we had emerged from the clouds and into supremely clear blue skies. We made it! Everyone eased up and I knew we were out of the madness.
When we landed, Capitán said our turbulence was the equivalent of driving on a really bumpy Lagos road, which we’re all used to because it happens pretty much everyday. He had experienced worse turbulence and had specifically been trained on how to navigate challenging flight and weather conditions. He saw an opening in the clouds and went for it. This is a simplified version of the more complex response he gave about mechanics, aerodynamics, experience and intuition.
The composure he displayed sounded awfully familiar to lessons from my management courses, and lessons from life more broadly. Success in life and in business requires knowledge, confidence, and a steady hand navigating the intersection of preparation and opportunity. We can do more to focus on what we’re trying to achieve, continue learning and creating, survive (perhaps even thrive) through the ups, downs and bumpy parts of the ride, and keep a keen eye for that window of opportunity. Then all those years of preparation catalyse into minutes of improbable triumph.
It was that simple for Capitán! And it was a timely and valuable lesson for me. I laughed at myself and went back to work that afternoon. On that short, one hour flight, I found the perfect metaphor for this journey called life.