Plan YOUR Part 66 Pathway

My grandmother was just like any other Mediterranean grandmother of every person who happens to have one.  She would get me to do jobs for her, but continue throughout to instruct me on how to do it.  It didn’t matter what it was, changing the gas bottle in the kitchen, painting her living room, weeding her garden, the job was irrelevant, she would be there, yapping on about how “you are supposed to do it”...  What stuck in my mind though and I try to use to this date was the old-wives’ tales she would come up with and this because of two reasons:

1. they were from old wives (not her) and I would tend to agree with them more
2. they made perfect sense, were logical, true, accurate and brought the message home

One that always stuck out to me in the realm of planning was “the suit tailor measures two times before he cuts the cloth, always measure twice and cut once”, which for a chaotic Mediterranean grandmother that was pretty organised.

Where am I going with this?  Plan. Plan and plan again.  Look at all the options here before you are in it and wondering how to get out of it/fix it/patch it up.  Make your mistakes here, at this stage they will not cost you; make them during the execution part and this could be the end. 

I admire chess players, I find them fascinating.  In the realm of planning, they are true champions.  Not because they can apply the half a dozen various moves the pieces of their colour choice can make, but because of the laid out plan they already have in their head, the next twenty moves are already planned, they just have to wait their turn to apply them, move after move until they overcome their opponent.  

I remember a chess champion we had at school when I was 15 or 16, and he played the 24 students of the chess club-all at once, going round the room, from player to player, with his 20-planned moves for each opponent, till he slayed one after another until there were none left.  The whole exercise took less than an hour and I have to say, he was not one bit fazed.

“Of course” I can hear you say, “this isn’t planning, this is sheer talent and memory power”.  I will agree up to a point, in that memory plays a big part in a champion chess players’ life, but without setting out with a plan with the opponent move-options, possibilities, outs, diversions, fall-back, plan b, c and d, the chess player will have no chance against a formidable opponent.

Coming a bit closer to home in our World of the Membership, two key phrases (not by any means ours), have emerged from all our projects we have been involved in and I would like to share them with you.

The first one came about from the days of us designing material for our Train The Trainer (TTT) project and talks about the 6 Ps as a Number 1 rule for Instructors Prep for a course and can be perfectly applied in the realm of Studying to get the License, studying in general, or any activity altogether.

 “PROPER PLANNING PREVENTS PISS POOR PERFORMANCE”

And if you have ever been in a poorly planned presentation you know exactly what I am talking about. You are sitting there, 10 minutes in thinking “what are they on about?  What am I doing here, or more to the point, what are they doing here?  If the course is a day or two, you just indulge it, go with the flow and take in as much as possible when you can, in your own time.  But imagine a course that is five weeks long?  You end up two weeks in, wanting your money back, you are at your wits end and hate your boss “for organising such a bad course.”  

Now take a step back and imagine you were the instructor in this scenario.  Would you be happy going into a five week presentation without sound preparation and a distinct plan?

The second planning phrase we swear by in the membership is;

 “DO IT ONCE, DO IT RIGHT, SAVE TIME, SAVE MONEY”

There is not much to add to this really, as the sentence in itself says it all.  

So as we go back full circle and remember my grandmother’s old wive’s tale, or if we emulate the champion chess player in always being one (or 5)-steps ahead - it is obvious that planning in any project is everything and really needs to be intergrated into everything we do.  As part of our quest to guide people through their aircraft engineering training journeys wherever they may be, we have built a Part 66 Planner which aligns itself to-the-tee with both of the phrases above.  This comprehensive document has everything you need to guide, assist, keep you accountable and most importantly to plan your journey within the membership.  Monthly Q&As as well as weekly Zoom “study rooms” also allow us to best advise you on how to plan and record your progress, where to go next and how to get there.