"The Clock is Running"
That's the first transmission you
hear from a Space Shuttle crew, spoken as they clear the tower. It's a
terrific
metaphor to characterize the difference between a well-planned launch
and
the kind that most companies arrange, including the launch that my
company is currently behind on. I'm feeling
rushed today so I'll try to make this quick. The clock is running.
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I have little in common with the remarkably disciplined
aviators who have punched those Space Shuttle clocks, though a couple
of them were
my classmates in our Undergraduate Pilot Training Squadron - Williams
AFB 67-F.
Despite those differences, my 6 years of military aviation similarly
conditioned me to the rigors of the clock they punch: the little round
black analog clock with the white markings that you can see on most
aircraft control panels. That rock solid mechanical device is one of
the 2 anachronisms you'll need the most when everything else loses
power - the other one's the magnetic compass, quaintly swimming in its
clear liquid. One thing's for sure: if you're ever reduced to relying
on those two quaint devices, everything else has gone wrong, and your
clock is indeed running.
Old School
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Aviation in my day was conditioned by the tradition of
the panel clock and
self discipline, not
technology and GPS satellites. When you were cleared to initiate a jet
penetration from your holding pattern over, for example, the Wichita
Visual Omni Range (ICT VOR), you proceeded outbound on a heading of 299
degrees for a
prescribed period of time, based on your groundspeed:
Then you'd execute a "procedure turn" - a
specific maneuver according to the archaic turn needle and, of course,
the clock that was always running.
In other words, the grand tradition of instrument
flying, inherited from
the amazing aviators from the days when tech was trivial and
the airplanes unforgiving and the aviators very
disciplined. They assumed
that, at every instant, the clock was running, and that every pilot
privileged to embrace their family that night did so because they knew
how to set
the clock, observe the clock, and turn according to a rigorous
procedure you held in your head and communicated to your hands. It was
an unforgiving business, required only when there was real weather and
real lives on the line and seldom a radar operator to protect you and
your passengers from inattention. Back in the day, the clock was always
running.
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Why do I burden you with this detail? Because it's part of my
conditioning that puts me out of step with most of the people I work
with. Hell, it puts me out of step with myself! For me, the
clock is running.
It was even worse than that. For much of my Air Force career,
I was tasked with aerial refueling of the USAF's most expensive and
most secret aircraft, the SR-71, the fabled "Blackbird" that flew
faster and higher than 80,000 feet and 3 times the speed of sound,
unarmed, taking expensive photographs of places it wasn't supposed to
fly over. That's me in front, sporting the prodigious member:
The trick of aerial refueling is that the tanker and the
receiver aircraft rendezvous precisely at the air refueling control
point (ARCP) at the air refueling control time (ARCT). Can you imagine
the personal conditioning that accompanies that imperative? Can you
imagine the kinds of pressures that enshrine the issue of timeliness in
every corner of your ganglia when that assignment is your only raison d'etre for,
like, 3 years of your life? Now imagine that imperative heaped on top
of the deeper conditioning that compels you, like any aviator of that
period, to worship the sanctity of punching the clock as you depart the
ICT VOR northwest bound, heading 299 degrees, for 3 minutes and 14
seconds, based on your ground speed of 160 knots (ground speed derived
from several calculations you've made in your head, taking into account
the current wind and based in turn on your indicated airspeed and your
true airspeed, as affected by the barometric pressure). The clock is
always running.
I can no more make those on-the-fly calculations today than
you might, but, like so many rigorous requirements of our respective
younger years, I did it once, as you would have, had you been required
to. But for me still, the clock is always running.
I'm compelled to share with you the monkey on my back: In some
compulsive way, I still demand that discipline from myself. And, like
it or not, I still expect it from you. When I tell you that I will call
you back at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon, a bell goes off in my head at 2:27
and I feel nervous about the prospect of missing that explicit
deadline. If I do call, and you're not there to receive my call, I'm
disappointed in both of us. In my head I carry around the old FAA
conventions, that each enroute position report must be made within 3
minutes of the flight plan, unless amended, and that arrival at the
destination must be within 10 minutes of the flight plan, unless
amended. For me, the clock is always running.
I wish I were better at this, and I wish you were too.
Somehow, given the myriad alternative realities we might subscribe to,
the running of the clock seems to me to be a virtuous one, and I'm
reluctant to abandon its demands. When I don't conform to that
standard, I respect myself less. And when we have a stated or implicit
agreement to deliver something or to communicate something or to
conclude something, the clock is always running.
The hard part is this: When I miss such a deadline, though
fortunately rare, I lose respect for myself. Unfortunately, If you even
suggest that you'll get back to me, and you do not, I also respect you
less. It doesn't matter if there's a reason or if it's important or if
it makes a difference. Like a grizzled Instructor Pilot, I can't help
wondering if you're serious about the mission, or if you're just in it
for the hell of it or if it's convenient for you. The running clock is
an unreasonable test I'm always applying to myself and, without their
acquiescence, to everyone around me.
A Political Campaign Story
Early in his campaign for NYC Public Advocate,
I met with Andrew Rasiej at his new headquarters. For about 8 months,
I'd been urging Andrew to plan deeply and explicitly the tech solutions
- the social networking mechanisms - that might secure his campaign.
Unfortunately, we never specified the intersection of his campaign's
needs and my people's capabilities. But that was not for lack of my
insistence that we needed to start early and be attentive to those
imperatives. From the summer of 2004 to the spring of 2005, it almost
became a joke: my insistence on a tech plan vs. the press of other
concerns.
As we met that April morning, Andrew's Blackberry buzzed and
he apologized as he saw the caller. "I'm sorry, Britt," Andrew said,
"I've gotta take this. This guy is impossible to get a hold of." He
reflected for a minute as he punched the phone . . . "Unlike you, who's
too responsive."
That seemed strange to me, and I hope Andrew doesn't resent my
telling the story. How could a person be too responsive?
What are the perceptual mechanisms that cause a person to be worth
attending to instantly because they're unresponsive, and another to be
noted as overly responsive? Only later did I realize that I get that a
lot. When a project is interesting and important to me, I tend to be on
top of it. I guess that's what the British refer to as being a little
too keen,
that it's somehow indicative of someone you don't want to be involved
with. Unfortunately, I'm just a victim of my conditioning. Similarly,
and equally disastrously, the pros at the Dean campaign were
unresponsive to most of my suggestions.
But it's Even Worse Than it Appears
So much of our work today is creative, and therefore
unpredictable, that we forget that our clients and customers and bosses
and coworkers aren't seeking creativity - they're seeking assurance.
Assurance is what happens when a series of experiences - real or
imagined - add up to the confident conclusion that whatever has been
promised will certainly occur. But assurance is perishable, subject to
the series of hints and impressions that surround any
activity.
Assurance erodes in the corrosive veil of silence that
surrounds
creativity. We the creators of our enterprises, whether programmers or
salesmen or founders or CEOs, creative types all, believe that our
clients and customers revere us for our brilliance and creativity. But
they do not. They can respect us only for how much we respect them. And the
only way they can tell if we respect them is if our clock is
running for them.
When we barely imply that something will happen at a certain time,
their clock starts running and ours better too. We'd like to think that
their regard for us is not contingent on our timeliness, but we're
kidding ourselves. The fact is that, the instant a stated or even
implicit deadline passes, their respect for us dries up like a puddle
in the desert.
When you tell a client that something will happen tomorrow at
3, and you do not follow up by 2:59, their respect for you is wounded
forever. Unfortunately, so is mine, because the clock is always running
for me.
1:50:49 AM 
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