Eighteen inches is all that separated John Foley from death in the cockpit of his Blue Angels jet on many occasions. What can you learn from him about taking risks but not leading your AV business to certain doom?
Foley, the former lead solo pilot of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, captivated an audience of 200 integrators, manufacturers and industry leaders at the 2017 AVIXA AV Executive Conference in Key Biscayne, Fla., telling them he’s “glad to be here” and advising them to use daily affirmations to be thankful for their place in the workforce.
“It’s not just about the job,” says Foley. “It’s also about the people we surround ourselves with and the impact we can have on other people.”
Flying to the Top
Being a Blue Angels pilot, Foley was focused on creating awe for the crowd, flying with precision to ensure he and his teammates stayed safe, using discipline that came through practicing the maneuvers repeatedly, maintaining a focus on the job at hand and trusting the rest of his team would do what they should do, too. [related]
“How do you get to the top of the pyramid? Then how do the people at the top of the pyramid take it to a whole new level?” asked Foley.
He then answered, saying that unparalleled level of excellence comes from making deep connections with people, aligning your actions with your beliefs and committing to your approach in a way few others, if any others, are.
For those who say there’s too much change for them to truly remain effective leaders, Foley counters that the Blue Angels replaced three of the six pilots every year, meaning there’s a 50 percent turnover in a profession that desperately needs things to work or one or more of the pilots could be flying for the last time.
“How do you sustain excellence in the midst of change?” asked Foley.
“My job was to inspire hopes and dreams. You want to have a deep connection to something larger than yourself. When you get good people to work with you and for you, the way you keep them is by finding people who are aligned with your mission.
“We spend so much time thinking, but dreams hit you in the heart, not the head. We need to figure out how to connect our hearts with our heads,” he says.
The Diamond Performance Framework
Foley pointed to what he calls the “high-performance zone,” the gap between where you are and where you want to go.
“How come some companies consistently outperform others and others don’t?” he asked.
It comes down to your mindset, said Foley, including your overall vision, the plan you put together, the execution of that plan and the feedback to how it’s executed.
It’s crucial to have belief in your vision and to get buy-in by inspiring others, said Foley.
“Once you decide how good you want to be, you’ll come up with the resources to get there,” he said.
“Can you give the experience of a lifetime? Purpose is the differentiator.”
Having a plan and being prepared and focused to execute that plan is the next key step in Foley’s Diamond Performance Framework.
The average person can only focus for about 13 seconds, said Foley, meaning it’s important to express your plan quickly.
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“If you don’t know what to look for, everything is a blur,” he said, pointing to his first practice with the Blue Angels when the lead pilot said he should turn when he saw a white house on the right with green shutters.
The third piece of the framework comes through execution, commitment and trust, said Foley.
To get agreement on a contract, AV business leaders must show respect, humility, openness, accountability and gratitude.
Those are the traits the Blue Angels follow after each time they fly, he says.
“It’s amazing how you can accelerate your AV business by following this,” said Foley.
That leads to the final step, the de-brief, where participants share feedback, celebrate successes and reassess what went wrong.
“What’s one thing you can do to increase your execution? To me, it’s trust,” said Foley.
Rebuilding after trust is broken is possible, but never easy, he said.
“If you push the limits, the limits will push back,” said Foley.
“When trust is busted, it takes more than one positive event to rebuild that trust. It’s about commitment and results.”
For those in the AV business world, Foley says having fun and making an impact in people’s lives is something he shares with them from his Blue Angels days.
He showed a picture of a young boy who met him after a flight decades ago who later became a Blue Angel pilot himself.
“Sometimes we forget we can impact people in big ways,” he says. “Most of the time, you never even know.”
