Blink and you’re toast …

With a top speed of 645 miles per hour pilots of the RAF’s T1 Hawk jets are expected to have lightning-fast reflexes.

We know them as the Red Arrows, our elite band of pilots who undergo hundreds of hours of training to hone their skills.

At that speed things happen before you’ve had time to think.

An object which is one mile away is on you in a fraction over five seconds.

Stopping for a coffee and weighing up your options is not an option.

If you haven’t thought about it, reasoned how to cope with it and planned and executed a change of course in those five and a half seconds, you’re toast.

It’s a career-defining moment, to say the least.

So how DO they cope?

The pilots call it thinking ahead of the aircraft.

They’re watching and thinking about what’s going on way out in front of them, so they have time to act.

The number of hand-eye coordinating calculations their brains process every second is immense. But because they’re trained to do it, instinct takes over.

Ok, so you and I don’t go to work in brown trousers with our backsides strapped into a Martin-Baker ejector seat – so what’s the takeaway for us?

Now is the perfect time to lift our gaze up from the battles in front of us and think about plans for 2024.

If we don’t, the year will pass us before we’ve had time to blink.

How are we going to reach a wider audience, promote new products and tell more people about what we do?

Now IS the time to plan and prepare.

Until next time.

Alec