Why the 11-year old jet setter is a great role model for business
Sadly due to privacy laws we may never know the name of the 11-year old boy who made headlines today after boarding an airplane in Manchester and flying to Rome without so much as a ticket, a passport or even a responsible adult in tow.
But, he sounds like just the kind of person marketing services agencies should be looking to appoint in a few years’ time and certainly the kind of personality that this industry should be welcoming with open arms and I’ll tell you for why.
I don’t know the boy or his mother, who I am sure went through a horrifically frightening time on realising her son was no longer at her side during a shopping trip in Wythenshawe, so I am surmising here to a degree, but I’m guessing this whole situation came about because the boy woke up one morning and thought ‘I want to go on an airplane today’.
Clearly he didn’t think much deeper than that. He only thought about what he wanted to achieve, not how he would achieve it. He didn’t then think about any of the barriers that potentially stood in his way of achieving his ultimate goal of boarding a plane.
The fact he was an 11 year old boy obviously didn’t dawn on him. That he has no passport was not even an issue. The total lack of a valid flight ticket was incidental to him. No suitcase? No problem. The boy had a vision and nothing was going to stand in his way. And guess what, nothing did stand in his way, despite the screeds of security that stood between him and his goal.
So, what, from a business and leadership perspective, can be learnt from this headline grabbing escapade?
Well, if you are thinking about launching your own agency business, but have yet to sum up the nerve to drop you letter of resignation on your gaffer’s desk, or you have recently taken the plunge, but are now having sleepless nights about how the hell you land that first client, you can learn a lot from our young jet setting scallywag.
Too often in business we let perceived barriers stand in our way and ultimately convince ourselves that something we want to achieve simply isn’t possible. We think of every reason as to why we shouldn’t do or try something and ignore the one single solitary reason as to why we should try something – because we want to and we are passionate about something. Sorry, that’s two reasons.
In the case of our young hero today, he more than likely didn’t even know he needed a passport to board an airplane. Therefore it wasn’t a barrier to him. Chances are he didn’t even know you need a ticket to get onto a plane, so the fact he didn’t have one didn’t worry him a jot or hold him back in any way.
I’d love to get into Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘there are known knowns and there are known unknowns’ here, which in itself it a great business analogy, but sadly I don’t have time. So, back to our young globetrotter.
Business is all about taking risks. You can calculate them as best as you can, but sometimes you just have to put your calculator to one side and have the belief that as long as you know where you want to get to you are smart and resourceful enough to find a way to get there. Chances are our young snotty nosed explorer didn’t know the way to Italy, but he got there.
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