The Luggage Lesson That Could Save Your Business
"Flight attendants, prepare for emergency descent."
"Flight attendants, prepare for emergency descent."
Those six words hit different when you're 30,000 feet up with your wife and kids looking at you for reassurance.
We'd just taken off in a small regional jet when we heard it—a sound that wasn't right. Not quite an explosion, not quite a bang, but something that made most of us look around for reassurance.
Then came the smell of smoke.
Not billowing clouds, but that acrid smell that tells you something electrical is burning. Something that shouldn't be.
That's when the pilot dropped the announcement, "Flight attendants, prepare for emergency descent."
The oxygen masks dropped. My chest tightened. But my wife and kids were watching, so I played it cool—at least on the outside. I knew projecting calm confidence would help the stay calm.
In my mind, though, I was processing the sound we'd heard, with the smell of smoke, oxygen masks on our face, and announcement that we were in an emergency descent and thinking, "There isn’t a damn thing I can do to change the outcome of this." Tough to admit for a control freak.
The pilot had already turned us around. We were heading back to DFW, and fast.
The Longest 15 Minutes of My Life
As we descended, the smoke smell got stronger. My kids stayed quiet—that eerie kind of quiet that tells you they're more scared than if they were crying.
Through the window, I could see our landing strip.
Except it wasn't just a landing strip anymore.
It was lit up like a crime scene. Fire trucks. Ambulances. Police cars. Their lights turned the Texas night sky into a carnival of red and blue.
We hit the ground hard and didn't slow down.
We sped down that tarmac at speeds I imagine would make NASCAR jealous, heading toward the furthest gate in the airport, at Terminal E, gate 38—what looked like the isolation zone at DFW.
When we finally stopped, I waited for the evacuation.
And waited.
And waited.
Here's Where It Gets Interesting
Instead of rushing to get us off the plane, the first responders did something that made zero sense to me at the time.
They ignored us completely.
Every single one of them rushed to the cargo hold and started chucking luggage onto the tarmac.
I'm sitting there with my family, the smell of smoke still in the air, watching these guys prioritize suitcases over human beings.
While still playing it cool on the outside, internally I was thinking, "Get us the f*** off this plane before you worry about my tank top collection."
The Reframe That Changed Everything
A few weeks later, I'm telling this story to my sister (a paramedic) and brother-in-law (a fire chief).
When I shared what I was thinking while sitting on the runway, my sister said, "Yeah, but they probably did exactly what they should have done."
🤔
She went on: "You only have so many resources and personnel as a first responder and many times you need to use them all to address the source of the problem. If there's an active threat in the cargo area, using resources to get you off the plane takes away from what you have to fix the biggest threat."
And it made complete sense.
It's resource allocation 101.
Evaluate the resources you have and determine how to deploy them to have the biggest and fastest impact on the thing that matters most.
Which also happens to be the job of a CEO.
The CEO's Dilemma
This is exactly what we do in business—identify threats and opportunities, then allocate our resources to address them as strategically as possible.
The problem is, we see the fires and try to fight them all, in every way possible.
Not getting enough leads? Let's register for every networking event, hire a cold email agency, redo the website, and hire an SDR—at the same time.
Close rates declining? Let's redo the entire sales process, change the CRM, and hire a new sales rep—and prioritize them equally.
And let’s revamp lead generation and our sales process simultaneously. That’ll solve them faster, right?
Unfortunately not.
Because by diverting resources to several solutions, we spread ourselves too thin and end up reducing the likelihood of any of them actually working.
The Real Question
What if, instead of asking "What are all the problems we need to solve?" we asked:
"What's the one constraint that, if removed, has the single biggest impact on every other fire in the business? And what’s the single best way to solve it?”
Then focused like crazy on executing that one thing as effectively as possible.
The problem?
Identifying the constraint and way to remove it is hard. And having the discipline to focus on that while letting other fires burn can be even harder.
You'll face the same criticism I had on that plane—people thinking they know better. Employees questioning your focus. Customers demanding attention to their specific fire.
And that's the real "hard work" of CEO'ing: identifying the core focus, marshaling resources to focus on that, and having the discipline to not getting distracted or dilute your resources.
But that's how you move from a culture of fire fighting to fire prevention. One constraint at a time.
Make This Actionable
Next time you sense resources are spread too thin, or you realize you're working too hard and spending too much money to make too little progress:
Stop and identify the source, not the symptoms. Sales down? Maybe it's not a sales problem—maybe it's a positioning problem with a generic market in a tighter economy that affects everything downstream. Take the time to make sure you're attacking the right problem to begin with.
Resist the heroic urge to attack everything at once. It feels productive but it's actually negligent. It's short term dopamine at the expense of long term growth.
Allocate all of your available resources to your core constraint. Not some. And not 5 constraints. Everything you can allocate on that one “big hairy ass problem.”
Accept the discomfort of letting other things wait. Yes, people might complain. Yes, it might feel wrong. Do it anyway.
Move fast on the source. The first responders didn't have a meeting about the luggage. They attacked it immediately and completely.
Final Thought
Sometimes the most caring thing you can do for the team and business is what looks careless.
Those first responders "ignored" us because they cared enough to actually keep us safe, not just make us feel safe at the time.
As CEOs, our job isn't to make everyone comfortable by addressing their immediate concerns.
It's to identify the real threat and eliminate it—even if that means letting people stay uncomfortable a little longer.
That’s a reminder for me as much as anyone.
Hope it helps,
Ray
P.S. We all made it off safely. The source? We never heard. Our best guess is a lithium battery or something in someone's checked bag. But man, I've never seen more unrequested gifts and credits come in from an airline in my life.