Pilot Vision

Rating:
Summary: Great correlation between business leadership and piloting.
Review: John Magness does a tremendous job of relating the skills required to be sucessful in a business environment to the skills learned and mastered as a military helicopter pilot. The correlation is amazingly useful as a tool to simplify a businessman's perspective on how to prioritize those tasks which are mission critical, and also those which are not. The material is presented in a very easy-to-relate, entertaining fashion. I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience, as well as the lessons learned.

Rating:
Summary: Effective leadership principles
Review: Pilot Vision is one of those books that is powerpacked with a handful of principles that when applied to your own personal leadership will powerfully leverage your effectiveness. It reads quickly and stays interesting. Magness makes some great metaphores with his experience as a combat pilot with the legendary "Nightstalkers". I enjoyed this book because after reading each chapter I was able to walk back into my office and apply the principles to my daily leadership.

Rating:
Summary: Consider something else
Review: Pilots are best known for their eyesight, and not their leadership skills. After all, flying an airplane requires very little teamwork and only mediocre communications skills. This is particularly true of fighter aircraft, where most are single-seat jobs. This self-centered bias is evident throughout this book, and the examples given are hardly worth emulating in real life.

The world of the pilot is best described as a monopoly, where artificial barriers such as eyesight requirements are used to exclude many competitors from the field. In the real world, it is very hard to practice this sort of discrimination and get away with it. The competition is much fiercer, and not everything goes as cleanly as in the rarified, controlled world of the pilot.

If you are running a one-person shop, then this books is great for you. But, if you have to lead people or work with groups of people, then this book only provides an example that you should not emulate.