PILOT HISTORY
For all the brilliance and innovation that occurs, it has been noted by several wise people I know that true success can quite often be attributed to two things: persistent hard work and pure dumb luck. Over our twenty years of our practice, the Pilot Principles have had our share of both, beginning with awards we won in the early eighties pioneering the use of the outdoors and experiential education for developing teams. The emergence of this award-winning training method is a story similar to the invention of the post-it note…it was basically an accident.
But, who's to complain? We learned a lot about systems and leadership and the power of cohesive cultures. We made our mark with this venue via significant involvement in the mid-eighties with the likes of General Electric (where a number of us taught and consulted between 1984-1995), DEC, Morgan Bank, and Walt Disney, all good, aggressive companies. Through working across GE's businesses as team builders and trouble-shooters, we were present at the birth of another innovation called Workout (which is written about in this site). Another major innovation, which, interestingly, began as a simple idea to eliminate work and bureaucracy, but, to many wise people's surprise, became a monster-hit way to engage large groups of disparate people around truly tough business issues and which produced good-to-great solutions that actually often got implemented (invariably, of course, by persistent hard work). Who knew? Given the results, we quickly adapted to leverage this great discovery. Our connection across most of GE's businesses gained us many invitations in the early nineties by companies turned-on by the GE Glow. We had a lot of contact with a lot of companies throughout this time.
Next came big luck (where preparation met opportunity?) with a chance meeting with "ABC"* on the topic of Workout, and, after a long story (also on this site), most noted for its persistence, Pilot won the bid to create and implement *"ABC's" version of Workout, which We successfully ran over a five year period working across nearly all of "ABC's" businesses and in over twenty countries.
Most recently, Pilot is focused on a few special segments, turnarounds, and mergers, where our experience really has a positive impact. Our recent affiliation with Porsche Driving School offers a whole new serious look at a client company’s performance, in terms of its track record, culture, leadership, and the commitment of individuals in senior positions. Also, our recent success with fast-tracking six sigma has been extremely well-received because it harnesses a powerful engagement process which takes the tools and gives them lots of arms and legs.
*"ABC" refers to "A BIG COMPANY" known world-wide that in 2006 has requested not linking its corporate name in associations with the term "ACT" for trademark purposes.
Chris Cappy
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