thunderbirds

in

Tonight I have a guest blogger. Ellie Charter is a friend and colleague of mine. She comes to work each day seeking to make a difference. She is an artist. Here what she has to say: I attended the Air Show at Offut Air Force Base recently. This was only my second experience at an Air Show. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I was amazed by so many talented pilots who showcased their skills. Most of these pilots flew one plane at a time and put on exciting solo flights. While the solo acts were very entertaining, the finale of The Thunderbirds really resonated with me.

Six planes, worth billions of dollars, flying at insanely high speeds with thousands of eyes on them – can you imagine the pressure? Flight formations so close that I was certain their wings would inevitably touch at some point and result in disaster. Yet, they performed flawlessly. How? How can 6 individual planes, with individual control panels and individual strengths and weaknesses pull together as a team and perform perfection?

  • Communication
  • Training
  • Trust
  • Expectation of Success
  • Ownership of Responsibility

As I thought of these characteristics and continued to marvel at their performance, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander to my work. In the past year, we have continuously worked hard to improve on traits I just mentioned. All the while, we work at insanely high speeds to remain top of our game. We have several different departments, all using our own programs and controls. Thus, we depend on each other to communicate and avoid collisions and failures. The success of our team is not based on one solo performance, but the ability of all of us to look beyond challenges with our systems, beyond our own agenda and focus on the team goal. It really doesn’t matter that a team or individual gets to perform the spotlight fly by – it’s so much cooler when we all fly in formation, in sync, and blow the minds of our fans.

We must not look at the road ahead as being filled with unrealistic goals. Instead, we should step up our game - communicate more, take ownership of the jobs given to us, and expect success from ourselves and each other.

We are the elite Thunderbirds in our industry and intend on doing everything in our power to stay there.

--Ellie Charter