Ep 177: Carey Lohrenz on How Leaders Can Stay Laser-Focused

SUMMARY 

As a pilot of a U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter plane, Carey Lohrenz learned the importance of being able to focus when the stakes are high. In this conversation with Jason Jaggard, she shares some of the simple tools that can help leaders in every situation learn to pursue excellence, plan effectively, and gain clarity on their “span of control.”  

IN THIS EPISODE 

00:00 Introduction. 

03:40 How Carey processes information from conference experiences into action.   

07:30 What kind of reminder system does Carey use?  

11:00 How Carey debriefs her days, and how she teaches her clients to debrief.  

15:30 How can leaders lead effective and honest debriefs?   

18:00 What was Carey’s path to being the first female pilot of an F-14 fighter?  

24:30 Carey’s process for assessing risk. 

25:45 How planning prepares a team to face the unexpected. 

31:30 What is a “red team,” and how is it used?  

35:30 Comments and Takeaways. 

LISTEN 

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STANDOUTS AND TAKEAWAYS 

• Continue to go back to the notes you take from conferences; as you move through different experiences, different things will stand out to you. 
• There simply is too much information in the world to pay attention to. Understanding the concept of “span of control” helps us avoid feeling overwhelmed.
• Identifying your top 3 priorities for the day—and posting them in a place where you will constantly see them—helps establish guardrails for your focus before your day gets going.
• Learning to debrief teaches you how to cycle quickly through the questions of, “What worked, what didn’t work, and why?” very quickly.  
• Debriefing almost anything you do also keeps you on a path of constant learning and journey of excellence that doesn’t become just another checklist of things to do.
• If you don’t understand why something worked (or failed) you continue to leave success up to chance.
• It’s actually more important to debrief after successful event.
• The debrief gives everybody involved a voice, and it’s actually the fastest way for a leader to figure out if your team understands what success looks like, and what their responsibilities are.
• Leaders must lead debriefs by example; identify your own mistakes first.
• When you are thinking through a big, scary goal, it is important to take your feelings out of the process as much as possible.
• Taking the time to plan—no matter how many times you’ve done something—ensures that everyone has a shared understanding of what the goal.
• Planning raises everyone’s situational awareness so that everyone is prepared to deal with inevitable changes.
• Being a voracious reader can help you find the person, situation or resource that can help you get through a challenge.
• Even flying fighter planes, pilots do not saddle themselves with extensive checklists that are not meaningful; every item on their list is there because by not doing it, someone has lost their life.
• Using checklists reduces your mental load and frees you up.
• Once a plan is finalized, bring in a “red team”—people with no knowledge of the plan, and no emotional investment—and ask them to review and poke holes in it.