News Feature

Leading Change? Act on the Most Relevant Data.

By Jerry Gregoire

December 01, 2002 — CIO — When I was a kid, about 5 or 6, I looked an awful lot like Howdy Doody, the kids-show marionette from the ’50s, complete with the red hair, freckles, big grin, you get the idea. Except for the wooden head, I don’t resemble Howdy Doody anymore, but I don’t look like Osama bin Laden either. Since Sept. 11th, I’ve developed a heartfelt kinship with anyone who believes they’ve been the victim of profiling. In a transparent effort to demonstrate their even-handedness, the folks at every airport security checkpoint look at me like I’m radioactive. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve made it to my airplane without having my luggage emptied, and I’ve spent more time shoeless than Joe Jackson.

Enough, already. After my last trip, I dusted off my old logbook and private pilot’s certificate and headed for the best flight school in town to reacquire long-lost skills (such as they were), determined not to fly commercial airlines again.

Things have to get pretty seriously screwed up to get me to change my routine. At a very fundamental and perhaps irrational level, I distrust and dislike change, and I’m not a bit embarrassed to say so. Furthermore, anybody who says they like change ought to be run through the metal detector again, then strip-searched by Leona Helmsley for being a suspiciously dangerous character. Change isn’t a goal, change just is. Imagine your life as a fast trajectory moving toward that large unavoidable target, CHANGE. Don’t worry, you’re not going to miss it. There’s no skill involved. When it comes to our role as CIOs, the fundamental nature, value and impact of change is not, and never was, about the if or the when. It’s not about the stated goals or even the journey. It’s about our ability to lead the way to a favorable or at least neutral outcome.

Back to piloting for a minute. In order to fly yourself around for business and have any expectation of making the most of your appointments, you’ve got to be qualified to fly in lousy weather. The qualification is called an instrument rating, and it permits you to fly when you can’t see anything out the window, controlling the airplane through clouds and fog and finding your way home by watching the instruments in the cockpit.

Sometimes pilots with no outside references to tell them which way is up will suffer a problem called spatial disorientation. During a recent five-year period, there were almost 500 spatial disorientation accidents in the United States. Most of those accidents resulted in one or more fatalities. Panic and emotions overcame the pilot’s ability to reason or process information. Spatial disorientation-induced panic explains why, over the years, well-trained pilots haven’t righted their airplane, turned on an autopilot or uttered a single word in the minutes preceding a fatal crash. John F. Kennedy Jr.’s crash is probably the best-known recent accident that seems to fit that scenario.