We all know what it means when we say someone is “behind the power curve.”
They’re a little slow on the uptake, haven’t made the expected progress, and are overwhelmed with no way out.
But have you ever wondered where it came from?
I didn’t know either until I started flight training in the Navy. One of the cool things about military aviation is being privy to all of the jargon and acronyms. It’s like a secret club with its own language.
Here are some of my favorites:
“Good gouge” refers to insider information, especially in regards to how to make a process easier or efficient.
“Hauling the chili” or “Hauling the mail” means that you are pushing your aircraft to top speed.
“Smoke a Lucky” means taking a quick pause before you act.
A “bag strike” is when you wear your flight suit to a civilian gathering, where it would garner positive attention, especially from the opposite sex. One such example would be showing up to a college football game after performing the flyover.
Sometimes, military jargon makes its way into the public vernacular, such as “behind the power curve.”
However, this particular phrase has a more technical meaning.
In this case, the power curve refers to a specific band of engine performance that must be maintained by the pilot when landing on the aircraft carrier.
Carrier landings are one of the most critical maneuvers that a naval aviator must master. To make matters worse, they are very difficult to simulate without actually doing it.
The boat must be moving at a sufficient speed to generate enough wind over the landing area in order for the critical wing profile of fighter aircraft to continue to produce lift. Speaking of the landing area, that refers to a specific box at the back of the ship, home to 4 arresting cables that stop the aircraft upon landing.
Considering what must happen for an aircraft flying at 137 knots to land in a 40-foot-long x 85-foot-wide area on a ship moving away from them at 30 knots (not to mention potentially bobbing up and down with the ocean swell) is quite dizzying.
To put that in perspective, in order to achieve a safe landing, known as an “OK pass”, as the pilot descends toward the deck, their head must pass through a 3×3’ imaginary window on the glideslope. The precision required to execute this properly is astounding, and they are expected to do this day in, day out for months on end. Just another day at the office for a naval aviator.
The glide slope required to land on the carrier is much steeper than a normal land-based approach to a long, safe asphalt runway. The target rate of descent is 800 ft/minute, significantly faster than when landing on a runway.
Every landing is graded by the landing signals officer, a fellow aviator whose job is to help spot whether the pilot is on the correct glideslope for a safe landing. They watch thousands of passes to hone their eye and hold the ultimate power to tell an aircrew to “wave off” if they are not in a safe position to land.
This is where the power curve comes in. When told to wave off, the pilot immediately applies max power via the throttles. However, jet engines require a few seconds period to spool up and generate more thrust. If they try to wave off and the engines don’t have enough time to kick in, the plane will crash into the back of the boat, killing not only the aircrew but also any personnel in that area of the ship. Thus, the throttles must be kept at a minimum power so that there is enough thrust on demand to go around, should they need it.
If a pilot is above glideslope and, in response, pulls too much power to correct their approach, they are behind the power curve. This is an incredibly dangerous situation, putting many lives at risk.
Given the context behind the saying, being behind the power curve is a powerful analogy for how we manage our finances.
The only way to lose the game of entrepreneurship is to get knocked out. There is only one way a business dies: running out of money.
And yet, so many business owners live teetering on the brink of extinction, where one lost client or one unpaid invoice could cause the entire house of cards to come crashing down.
This phenomenon is, of course, entirely understandable. When we are in startup mode, managing cash flow can seem like a never-ending game of three-card Monty, where we constantly borrow from the future to satisfy the most pressing need.
We get used to living on the brink and, in many cases, can start to normalize the stress. It’s no wonder that the chaos also spills over into founders’ personal lives.
As a startup starts to climb out of chaos toward maturity, it is critical to build a cash reserve. The same goes for a founder’s personal finances.
My minimum recommended operating reserve for any business is 3-6 months of expenses, depending on the volatility of their revenue. For personal finance, the minimum is 12 months of living expenses in a liquid asset that can accessed in 24-48 hrs.
Here’s the bottom line: if you don’t have either of these minimum reserves, you are dangerously behind the power curve.
Before you reinvest in new growth or hire new employees, perhaps consider the benefit of slowing down to speed up. By building your cash reserves, you are buying yourself a critical lifeline that can help your business weather any storm.
This is especially pervasive in venture-backed companies, where many founders rely on just-in-time funding to make the next payroll cycle. It’s only a matter of time before time runs out while the check is in the proverbial mail.
Ask yourself: what is the true cost of operating without a safety net?
Most of us can’t even grasp the weight of the mental load created by living with our backs against the wall. Imagine how freeing it would be to know that no matter what storm came your way, you have a liferaft ready to deploy.
If you do have a reserve, the next step is to continue looking for places where you can engineer out risk and extend your runway even further.
For any founder, our relentless belief in the future can be our fuel, but it can also be our downfall.
I’ve learned this the hard way more times than I care to admit.
Here’s hoping you never have to.
To staying ahead of the curve,
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