As pilots and FAA professionals we have friends that fly the Pitts S-1, one of the most legendary aerobatic biplanes ever built. When asked what it’s like to fly the Pitts, those pilots don’t start the thrill of inverted flight or the rush of a perfect aerobatic maneuver. they often say something I related to: “It’s not a fun airplane to fly. It’s always trying to kill you.”
That single sentence speaks volumes about optimizing business at a professional services firm.
The Illusion of an Autopilot
In my previous life as a Marine Harrier pilot, I flew one of the most demanding aircraft in the inventory. The AV-8B doesn’t forgive inattention. There’s no autopilot moment where you can mentally check out, rest your hand on the side rail, and let the aircraft fly itself. Every second in that cockpit demanded presence. The jet was perpetually asking: Are you still here? Just checking.
Running End State Solutions, my aerospace certification consultancy, operates under the same unforgiving physics. Every client engagement, every FAA interaction, every regulatory pathway we’re navigating—these aren’t stable systems that maintain altitude on their own. They’re dynamic, demanding, and unrelenting. The moment you assume you’ve reached cruise, you’ve already started the descent toward failure. The cliche is that you are either growing or dying.
My business associate and dear friend Kevin (aka “Certdude”!), a 40-year aviation certification veteran, put it perfectly during a recent conversation about managing programs: “You’re flying a twin cross-country, and I need you to run this program as if you have an engine out the whole time.” There is no cruise. There’s only managed urgency.
The Integrator Paradox
Here’s what makes this particularly dangerous for boutique professional services firms like ours: as owners, we can’t fly every sortie ourselves. We rely on executive assistants, program managers and integrators to maintain that cockpit-level engagement across our client portfolio.
But here’s what I’ve observed—and I include myself in this indictment: the very experience that qualifies someone for program management can become their liability. When you’ve flown enough hours, proficiency in procedures become automatic. The constant vigilance that kept you alive as a new pilot gradually relaxes into routine. You start to trust the aircraft.
And that’s exactly when it tries to kill you.
Kevin drives a Lotus, and he describes it the same way: “You’re driving all the time. There’s no one finger on the wheel. You’re hanging on for dear life.” The analogy extends perfectly to our world. A Lotus or a Pitts doesn’t have electronic stability control smoothing out your mistakes. Every input matters. Every moment of inattention compounds.
That kind of urgency matters. In professional services, particularly in high-stakes regulatory work, the consequences of lacking urgency aren’t always immediately visible. A missed follow-up doesn’t crash the plane today. An open loop with a regulator doesn’t kill the client relationship this week. The failures are insidious. They accumulate. And by the time they manifest, recovery options have narrowed dramatically.
Consider the difference between these two approaches to a critical call:
Approach A: “Thanks for the update. Let me know when you hear back.”
Approach B: “That’s helpful. Can you get me an answer by Friday? If not Friday, what’s the earliest realistic timeline, and what do you need from me to make that happen?”
The first approach feels collegial and reasonable. It’s also how programs die slowly. The second approach feels uncomfortable—maybe even pushy. It’s also how programs stay airborne.
The discomfort is the point. Every meaningful engagement in our world requires asking for something that feels unreasonable. The alternative—waiting for the system to produce results on its own timeline—is the professional services equivalent of hoping the Pitts will just level itself out.
The Founder’s Confession
I need to be honest here: I’m as guilty of this as anyone. Despite decades in environments that demanded urgent, high-performance execution—Marine aviation, complex certification programs, situations where lives literally depended on sustained focus—I still catch myself drifting toward comfort.
We all have good days and bad days. Some days the last thing I want to do is chase down an open loop or push back on a timeline that everyone seems content with. The work is fatiguing in a way that compounds over years. You start to understand why experienced professionals sometimes prefer to do things “just well enough.”
This is precisely why the program managers we rely on must embody urgency as a core competency, not an occasional effort. Because when the founder’s attention flags—and it will—someone needs to be flying the aircraft.
Building an Organization That Stays Airborne
The question isn’t whether you’ll face moments of diminished urgency. You will. The question is whether your organization is designed to survive them.
This means hiring program managers who possess what Kevin calls “killer instinct”—the uncomfortable willingness to push, follow up, close loops, and demand timelines even when the path of least resistance is waiting. It means creating systems that make urgency the default, not the exception. And it means having honest conversations when that urgency is absent.
Not everyone has this in them. Some people are predisposed to casual over urgent. They don’t want to pressure others because they don’t want to be pressured themselves. In a professional services firm operating in complex, high-stakes environments, that predisposition is a structural vulnerability.
The Stakes Are Real
My company’s mission is “We Certify Autonomy in Aerospace.” We help emerging technology companies navigate FAA regulatory pathways so they can reach revenue operations. The stakes for our clients are measured in millions of dollars and years of development. A program that stalls because someone didn’t close a loop doesn’t just inconvenience a client—it can delay the entire trajectory of a company.
That might sound dramatic. It’s not. In aerospace certification, timing is a major variable. A three-day delay can compound into a three-week delay which compounds into a quarter lost. The physics of urgency are unforgiving. While the FAA might have that luxury, we in industry do not.
A Final Thought from the Cockpit
The Pitts S-1 has been called one of the purest expressions of what an airplane can be—light, responsive, and quite intolerant of pilot error. There’s something honest about a machine that refuses to pretend it’s safer than it is.
Professional services firms would benefit from the same honesty. The systems we build, the clients we serve, the regulations we navigate—none of it is stable. None of it maintains itself. And the moment we forget that, we’ve already begun the descent to the crash site.
The Pitts is always trying to kill you. So is your business. The question is whether you’re still flying it.