Performance Requires Imperfection

Precision Isn’t the Mission

There’s no shortage of leadership advice that sounds inspiring right up until you try to run an actual organization with it.

Platitudes are easy. Precision feels safe. But neither of them gets you where you actually need to go.

Let’s talk about something better:

what it feels like when a trusted system finally carries you forward.

Let’s talk about flow.

Re-Entry

When I learned to fly on old steam-gauge aircraft, the instruments were simple and slow. They told you what was happening, eventually, but you had to feel the airplane first—its balance, its lift, its nose, its attitude. The gauges were confirmation, not command.

Later, when I moved into aircraft with faster, cleaner, more precise data, something unexpected happened:

my flying got worse.

Not because the airplane changed.

Because I did.

I started chasing the numbers.

Twenty feet low? Correct.

Two degrees off heading? Correct.

Airspeed twitches three knots? Correct again.

Each input felt justified.

Stacked together, they created oscillation.

I wasn’t flying anymore. I was fighting.

And fighting is not flying.

And one day an instructor tapped the glareshield, pointed out the windscreen, and said the line that put everything back in place:

“Stop chasing the numbers. Fly the plane.”

I didn’t realize it then, but that wasn’t just a pilot lesson.

It was a leadership lesson.

A systems lesson.

A life lesson.

The Leader’s Cockpit

Every leader today sits in a cockpit more data-saturated than any aircraft I ever flew.

Dashboards that refresh instantly.

Slack threads that never sleep.

Customer sentiment charts.

Forecasts. KPIs. Predictive analytics.

Feedback loops for every angle of the business.

Everything flickers.

Everything pings.

Everything looks like it needs your input.

And without realizing it, you start flying the numbers instead of flying the mission.

A KPI dips? Correct.

A customer escalates? Correct.

A team slows? Correct.

Another metric wiggles? Correct again.

Not because the mission requires it—

but because the data tempts it.

Here’s the truth that rarely gets spoken:

Feedback isn’t the mission.

Precision isn’t the mission.

And perfection?

That’s not the mission either.

The mission is the mission.

Feedback as Foresight

Once you trust your system, the risk shifts.

You no longer fear doing too little—you start doing too much.

You begin worshiping precision instead of practicing presence.

Flow asks a different question:

Can you stay in motion without chasing perfection?

Can you read the gauges without becoming ruled by them?

Can you allow the system to stabilize before you intervene?

Here's the hard truth: chasing every flicker creates the very instability you’re trying to prevent.

This risk shows up in every system.

My stepson, who has Type 1 diabetes, wears a continuous glucose monitor that updates every five minutes. Early on—like many T1Ds—he reacted to every fluctuation.

Correct up. Correct down.

Overcorrect. Crash. Spike. Crash again.

One night I told him the same thing that saved my flying:

“You're flying the number, not the system.”

Because whether it’s aircraft, organizations, or blood chemistry, the rule is the same:

When you react faster than the feedback loop can stabilize, you create the instability yourself.

Flow is the opposite.

Flow is the state where feedback becomes foresight instead of fuel for overreaction. It’s the moment you can tell the difference between noise and signal.

You sense what matters, allow what doesn’t, and tune only what requires it — proportionally, calmly, intentionally.

And here’s the part that surprised me when I finally learned to stop chasing the needles and just fly:

The numbers got better too.

Altitude steadied.

Airspeed smoothed.

Heading held.

Not because I was working harder—

but because the airplane finally had the room to do what it was designed to do.

Organizations behave the same way.

Flow as Output

Flow isn’t a process you follow.

It isn’t a mantra you repeat.

It isn’t a mood or a productivity hack.

Flow is the output of a system that has finally settled into its design.

Faith got you moving again.

Trust let you loosen your grip.

Process gave you clean feedback.

Flow is what happens when those elements align.

Here’s what flow looks like in real leadership:

- Baseline performance holds steady without your constant touch.

- Trends appear before crises.

- Leading indicators whisper what’s coming; lagging indicators quietly confirm what you already sensed.

- Adjustments grow smaller, calmer, better timed.

- Noise stays noise.

- Signal becomes unmistakable.

- Improvement is a matter of timing, not tension.

You stop proving the system.

You start benefiting from it.

You stop chasing control.

You start maintaining direction.

You stop reacting.

You start harvesting—the insights, patterns, and early warnings the system naturally generates when you’re not choking it with input.

You stop trying to hold perfect altitude.

You start flying toward the destination.

Flow is the moment the system begins giving back everything you built into it.

Mission Over Precision

Here’s the shift that sits at the heart of this whole thing:

The purpose of flying is not to demonstrate how perfectly you can hold altitude.

The purpose is to get somewhere.

Leaders forget this constantly.

They mistake:

- stability for progress

- dashboards for direction

- precision for performance

- control for competence

Flow restores the truth:

Progress matters more than precision.

Direction matters more than demonstration.

Stability matters more than tight control.

Presence matters more than perfection.

And the tactics are real:

Audit the noise.

Eliminate feedback channels that generate motion but not meaning.

Codify what’s stable.

Document what’s working before you try to improve it.

Operate → review → refine.

A calm cadence outperforms constant tinkering.

Correct proportionally.

Make the smallest necessary adjustment — then give the system time to respond before touching it again.

Flow requires discipline between corrections, not more corrections.

This is how you protect meaningful motion.

This is how you maintain direction without burning your fuel on unnecessary inputs.

Flow is sustainable movement toward a destination.

It’s what a trusted system produces when you stop trying to show how tightly you can hold the controls—and instead remember why you’re flying at all.

What Comes Next

Flow is real.

It’s earned.

And it’s fragile.

Because the air always changes.

Next time, we’ll explore what happens when flow meets interference — and how to stay aligned with the mission when the signals get noisy.