Soaring to New Heights in Business and Life

The following is an excerpt of The Flight to Excellence: Soaring to New Heights in Business and Life, from US Air Force pilot, Delta Airlines captain, lawyer, award-winning businessman, and professional speaker William Thompson. The Flight to Excellence is available starting January 12, 2021, from Greenleaf Book Group.

Praise for The Flight to Excellence

“Captain Thompson’s achievements as a USAF Academy grad, military pilot, and entrepreneur are living proof of his successful methods for dreaming big and being your best, rather than striving for unreachable perfection. His words of wisdom in Flight to Excellence are a no-nonsense guide to life planning, whether you are facing big or little decisions.’’
— Wayne Peacock, President and CEO, USAA

‘’The compelling principles espoused in this book fit the Captain s life to a ‘’T’’ (pun intended)! It amply demonstrates that striving for excellence in all that one does is truly the key to success in all phases of life.’’
— Wayne A. Budd, Former Associate Attorney General of the Unites States and Chairman, AAA

Introduction

You are sitting at your desk, thinking — actually thinking for a change. It’s something that you usually have little time for — because ordinarily you are so busy doing. Your normal daily requirements are nonstop, but you still often feel that you’re not accomplishing enough (or fast enough) to get you where you think you should be. You’re smart, you do the work, and you are dedicated, but you’re just not flying as high as you know you can.

Welcome to the club. This is an all-too-common feeling among many business executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs. They feel they are making the sacrifices, working long hours, and putting in the effort, but they sense their return on investment is often mediocre at best. The problem is not your intelligence or your commitment. And it certainly is not your ambition, because you want to be considered among the elite. The difficulty is often not having a laser-like focus on exactly what you are striving for and not having a proven process that enables you to distinguish yourself from your contemporaries. You need a system that clearly separates you from the pack.

We all have heard the phrase “striving for excellence,” but what do those words really mean? Do they mean that you should be motivated to achieve perfection every time you attempt something or that you have to be flawless in the execution of everything you do? Well, no. It means you should be the best that you can be, each and every time. When we look around us, it may seem that most people are not striving for excellence. Maybe that is because it is much easier to settle for mediocrity. Often it seems that many people’s DNA tells them to do just what is required and not much more.

Look around, and you’ll see evidence aplenty. Have you noticed the people who run a bit late for work but have their eye on the clock and are out the door a little early at the end of the day? Will those people volunteer for a tough project or will they avert their eyes from that challenge? Or, how many times have you heard, “We tried that before, and it didn’t work,” when someone brings up a new idea or offers a different approach to a problem? These are all examples of mediocrity in action.

On the other hand are those who are striving for perfection. They belong to a much smaller group, but sadly, the end result is frequently the same. They are often stuck in a rut and not moving steadily ahead. But wait, you say. Isn’t perfection a good thing?

Not really. The truth is that perfection can rarely be achieved, and its pursuit often leads to inefficiency and wasted time precisely for that reason. Those who strive for perfection are often left frustrated or demotivated by the unappreciated reality that no matter how much effort they expend, they will never get to that perfect state.

“Excellence means doing your best today and looking for ways to be better tomorrow.”

Excellence is the sweet spot between mediocrity and perfection. It’s doing more than what is required, and always working to improve, and it should be the focus of whatever pursuit you’re after. The fact is that most of us can always do better than we are currently doing and can be better than we currently are. Constantly striving to improve ourselves is precisely how we can soar to new heights in our business and our life. Excellence means doing your best today and looking for ways to be better tomorrow. Relentless improvement should always be the objective. It’s what your flight to excellence is all about.

Of course, it’s easy to say, “Strive for excellence.” It’s like saying, “If you want to lose weight, eat less and exercise more.” We all know that, yet millions of people have that knowledge, want to be slimmer, and just can’t shed the weight. Most people need a process, a system, or a construct of some sort to help in achieving their goals. For the person who wants to lose weight, the solution might be a personal trainer, a group like Weight Watchers, or a great new book. There is no one perfect method. It’s whatever works best for them. But the process they choose becomes the throttle that moves them forward toward accomplishing their objective.

The same concept holds true when striving for any type of excellence. Most people need both the motivation and a process to successfully move to a greater personal or professional level. The incentives can be many and different for every person: advancement in your company, building your own business, growing a healthy increase in the bottom line, or having better relationships with family and close friends. Once you decide where you want to go on your particular flight to excellence, you’ll need a proven process that works for you.

I’m going to offer a process that has worked for me. It is a method I have shared with others, most recently in my speaking engagements but also throughout my professional life. The adherents to the process have obtained amazing results. Students having difficulty in pilot training have gone on to complete the training program near the top of the class. Entrepreneurs I have counseled have built successful businesses, and several executives I’ve coached have become CEOs. I call it the P4 System because the four key engines that power success all begin with the letter P, and it gives clear direction on how to achieve excellence in your life. It has worked to make me a multimillionaire and enabled me to literally pilot my way to success.

But let me be clear. I was not endowed with amazing gifts or incredible talents. Nor was I raised in an environment of privilege or advantage. Quite the contrary! I grew up as a young black kid in Orangeburg, South Carolina, when segregation was still the law of the land, at a time and in a place where the opportunities for a young African-American male were limited and few. My mom and dad were teenage parents — sixteen and nineteen years old when they got married. I came along a year and a half later, and shortly thereafter, my dad was drafted into the army to go fight in the Korean War. It was clearly an inauspicious beginning for the Thompson family household.

Yet, despite this history, I have been blessed to live an interesting and fulfilling life. As the country began to go through a transformation due to the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s and the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, I became very involved in the civil rights movement as a young teen. I was arrested and spent time in jail for demonstrating at the Orangeburg County Courthouse on August 3, 1965, when I was fourteen.

Later that fall, I joined eleven other African-American students in integrating all-white Orangeburg High School and, for a time, was escorted to school by police each day. It was during this period that I began to unconsciously follow what would become my P4 System as I strove for excellence and success in what was a hostile new environment.

My four years at Orangeburg High were difficult and filled with daily challenges. But I also experienced daily victories, as the benefits of applying my steadily evolving P4 System began to take hold, and this young black kid saw human nature, attitudes, and behavior in my teachers and fellow students start to change. With resolve and growing confidence as the obstacles to success began to fall, I started to see the true potential of being in what was a unique and unusual situation. I began to envision possibilities that would have been unimaginable to my forefathers.

By my senior year, I had been fortunate to receive appointments to two of our nation’s service academies, and the Air Force Academy was my eventual choice. To say that this profoundly changed my life would be a tremendous understatement. I later found out that I was the first African American from South Carolina to go to this prestigious Colorado school. Many members of my family were teachers, and although I had not yet given my future occupation serious thought, teaching seemed to be a natural consideration for me as well. But my appointment to the Air Force Academy was a life-changing paradigm shift. I could do more than teach in a classroom; I could literally reach for the sky.

Going to the Academy opened a world to this unsophisticated country boy that was previously unthinkable. I got to fly in fighter jets, learned to fly airplanes myself, and earned my skydiving wings. I traveled across the country and to different points across the globe—all during my cadet years while I was getting one of the best educations possible from one of the most prominent universities in the world. We were given leadership opportunities and had to make consequential decisions while many of our contemporaries in civilian universities were just trying to get through school without partying too hard.

The Academy was a very demanding place, with a tough four-year academic program, military training, and rigorous athletic requirements. It was a challenging journey, and I certainly had my ups and downs, as I was unprepared, in some ways, to compete on the national level with some of the best and the brightest our country had to offer. What bridged the gap was my focus on the P4 System. I survived: My class began with 1,406 cadets, but only 844 of us graduated after those arduous four years.

After graduating from the Academy and a short tour on the staff, I was off to jet pilot training in southern Georgia. Learning to fly a fighter-type Air Force jet was exciting, exhilarating, and demanding, yet the timing could not have been worse. The war in Vietnam was winding down, and the Air Force had more pilots than it needed. The end result was a program for us new trainees that was even more challenging than it would normally have been. We began the program with forty-eight pilot trainees, and a year later only twenty-four of us pinned on our new Air Force silver pilot’s wings.

Once again, the P4 System provided the anchor that was the underpinning for my success. I was the only Academy graduate in my pilot training class and, as the “senior” second lieutenant, I was appointed section leader. Some of my fellow classmates assumed that being an Academy grad gave me a secret advantage that contributed to my achievement, and they sought my help. While I expect that spending four years at the Academy certainly gave me some imperceptible advantages, there were no direct benefits associated with getting through ground school and learning to fly the jet. I was, however, happy to share my approach to getting through the program, and my colleagues who adopted the P4 System also enjoyed similar success.

With my new silver wings, I was excited to go off and become an Air Force fighter pilot. Unfortunately, Uncle Sam had different plans. Ironically, because of our success in the training program, two of us were selected to immediately become instructor pilots and were sent to the Air Force’s Pilot Instructor Training program in San Antonio, Texas. Even though this was a special honor, and I saluted smartly and accepted my fate, I was not ready to return to our Georgia base after completing training in Texas. I wanted to fly a different plane, enjoy new scenery, and have fewer mosquitoes to deal with. But for the time being, the needs of the Air Force took precedence.

While in pilot instructor training, I was offered the opportunity to go to Sacramento, California, to be a part of a new program that flew navigator trainees in fighter-type jets. I literally jumped at the chance. From southern Georgia to Northern California! The universe sometimes works in mysterious ways.

I enjoyed my best and last Air Force assignment in Sacramento. The flying was incomparable, the Sierra mountains were beautiful, and jetting over Lake Tahoe was absolutely stunning. Also, I was able to go to graduate school at night to work on a master’s degree and then, after being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, went off to law school to solidify my backup plan.

But two magazines, Fortune and Entrepreneur, changed my Air Force career plans: They opened my mind to the possibility of one day becoming a millionaire, which I had never considered before. With inflation soaring toward 15 percent and Congress debating whether to give the military a 3 or 4 percent pay raise, it was abundantly clear that the millionaire track didn’t lie within the Air Force.

I began to look at other options, and the airline industry offered an attractive alternative. Delta Air Lines was the top carrier in the business, and they were gracious enough to offer me a job. I moved to Boston after my training with Delta to fly and to finish law school. After graduating and passing the bar, I opened a business and began to execute the next phase of my plan.

The business grew, which led to other financial opportunities — mostly winners but some losers, too. I also became interested in the political arena, and as time passed, I would serve in the administrations of four governors — two Democrats and two Republicans — overseeing the statewide aviation systems.

I sold my businesses and took an early retirement from Delta to begin a speaking and writing career, but fate intervened once again. The board of directors of the AOG (Association of Graduates), which represents the fifty thousand graduates from the Air Force Academy, offered me the opportunity to serve as the president and CEO. We put a broken house back in order, and our team enjoyed a stellar run growing our alumni chapters from thirty-one to eighty-five and increasing assets from $35 million to almost $60 million in just five years. We did it by establishing a clear vision and by getting and developing the right crew members. After all, a great organization comprises good people who have made the commitment to excellence and to do great things.

I have given these brief highlights of my background not to impress you or to pontificate on how great I am; it’s really quite the opposite. As I shared with you earlier, I am no one special, and I wasn’t born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth. But I have had the guidance of a method — the P4 System, which has worked exceedingly well for me during both good and very challenging times. It has been my guide when facing personal trials, financial troubles, and even the tribulations we all faced with COVID-19. It has been a top gun pilot for others who have employed it, and I truly believe it can work just as impressively for you.

So, are you ready to take the flight? Excellence is possible even if it is at times not an easy route. It requires both a decision on your part and the desire to be better than you currently are. And it will take discipline and determination when you inevitably fly through stretches of turbulent skies. But the possibilities are truly endless, and the rewards at your destination are more than you can imagine.

Can you do it? Of course, you can. Since you’re the master of your fate and the captain of your soul, it’s your decision to make. We can’t all be pilots, and all pilots can’t fly jets. But those few who do, fly higher and faster than anyone else on earth. If you are ready for the journey, welcome aboard!