Learn Productivity From Airlines

This post can help you tighten up your entire approach in your work.  You’ll increase your productivity based on how much thought you’re prepared to put into this.  Despite how unproductive you may feel airlines are from a passenger perspective, they always strive to be more productive and produce a slicker turn around.  Their survival depends on it.  My next door neighbour is a pilot.  When he’s not flying, he spends most of his time answering my endless stream of questions about everything to do with flying planes.  As he talks, I clearly see the similarities between his work, my work and everyone’s work.  In fact, I see his work as one of the best models or analogies I know of to improve how we function in our own work.

Let’s steal the hard work of the airline industry…

Your flight:

• your days work
• your projects/tasks
• your entire business or career

Your roles:

• pilot
• check-in
• navigator
• co-pilot to a colleague
• and many more, depending on your team structure

Here’s some things to think about that the airline industry take seriously.  So should we:

• the point of the flight – to get passengers from A to B as safely and enjoyably as possible
• the procedures for passengers from arrival to check-in, boarding and so on (preparation to commence work)
• pilot procedures (controlling the plane, checking the dials, communicating and updating…)
• departure times (when you begin work)
• landing times (when you aim to complete work – deadlines)
• check-in times
• security (preventing any problems creeping in to your work)
• videos of what you can do at destination (what will you do when you complete this task/project?)
• turbulence
• emergency procedures (if x goes wrong, do y)
• changing the flight plan (be flexible, you MUST get your passengers to B somehow.  Diverting and organising a bus is an option.  Remember, your passengers are your customers.  And your team.  And your boss.  They all want you to help them get from A to B)
• air-traffic control (landing your tasks and projects safely to completion and organising the ‘take off’ of other tasks and projects)

How Does This Work in the Airline Industry?

This list is just a start, but I write it to encourage you to ask yourself, whenever you have a problem in your productivity or process flow, ‘what’s the equivalent of this in the airline industry?  How do they make it work?’  You’ll find some useful answers to transfer back to your own work.  A lot of productivity theory they train on courses you’ll get from this exercise if you think deeply enough.

Also, remember, the plane keeps flying even when the pilot takes a break (the co-pilot mans the controls together with autopilot).  They keep you heading to B.  So how could you maintain progress when you take a break?  Can your computer get on with something?  Can your co-pilots keep momentum on your work?  Organise yourself and delegate before taking breaks to make this possible.

Circling Planes

And they always keep moving until they land – they have to!  They circle the plane while they wait for clearance which of course costs a lot too.  Every minute they spend circling, the cost goes up and the urgency to land increases.  What flights of yours are currently circling and getting costly?  If they must land, you better prioritise and land them.  Get some order here and land them one by one!

Think about these ideas to improve how you operate in your work.  And if you have any more airline analogies (or others) for improving our productivity then please share them below in the comments.

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4. How You Limit What You Earn
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