Sender: <marv@lancaironline.net> (Marvin Kaye)
To: lml
Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 21:37:06 -0500
Message-ID: <redirect-2007317@logan.com>
Disposition-Notification-To: Brent Regan <Brent@regandesigns.com>
From: Brent Regan <Brent@regandesigns.com>
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Subject: Re: Lancairs, what else?
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Hello Joe:
Congratulations on you acquisition. The challenges facing you in the 
next weeks and months are considerable. The perturbation in the "status 
quo" will inevitably shake loose all the pent up grumbling present in 
any organization and this fallout may obscure and detract from the path 
that will take you to long term success and prosperity. Your call for 
comment and input is admirable and will no doubt bear significant fruit, 
along with a lot of chaff. The trick to understanding is effective 
winnowing.

Before offering an opinion I would like to clarify the meaning as it is 
used here. By definition a personal opinion (as opposed to a legal 
opinion) is a belief held without actual proof. You can agree or 
disagree with another persons opinion but opinions can never be "wrong" 
as they are the expression of a belief and not a fact. This is not a 
manifestation of political correctness relativism (e.g. there are no 
absolutes) but rather the product of critical thinking. Opinions, and 
beauty, are in the mind of the beholder.

Occasionally in the past I have emphasized this by prefacing my opinions 
with the statement that I am an idiot, and that everything I say should 
be questioned as suspect. The hope is that the reader will perform their 
own critical investigation of the facts at hand and arrive at a similar 
opinion. The essence of this, as it relates to your immediate situation, 
is that peoples' opinions should hold very little weight compared to HOW 
they arrived at those opinions. "How did John arrive at that opinion?" 
is a much better question than "What can I do to make John happy?".

A relevant case in point is where I recently expressed and opinion on 
this form that Kirk at Lancair Avionics was the "Go To Guy" for the CFS 
EFIS for Lancairs. I received numerous responses covering the good-bad 
spectrum. Was Kirk bipolar? Did he have an evil twin whose purpose was 
to piss off every third customer? Not likely. In my opinion (there it is 
again) the variable that causes these wildly different opinions is the 
customer themselves, and the coefficient is communication. When the 
client walks into the avionics shop they carry with them a large bundle 
of expectations. Some are realistic and some are not. They are making a 
financial commitment, of sufficient magnitude to acquire a nice single 
family dwelling in many parts of the country, on little more than a 
handshake. All the negative opinions I received could be categorized as 
Kirk not delivering in the time expected. "Expected" is the operational 
word. Kirk failed to manage, with communication, the clients 
expectations. I doubt "manage client expectations" is even listed on 
Kirk's job description.

The opinion light is still lit.

What sane person would spend several thousand hours building a craft so 
they can save a few minutes going from A to B. There is no "Accountants 
Argument" for building and owing a Lancair unless your goal is red ink. 
If we assume most Lancair builders are sane then there must be other 
reasons to build and own. Anyone reading these words on this forum 
already know the answer, and no two answers are exactly the same. What 
you, Joe, have to remember is this:

Lancair sells a process to fulfill a fantasy.

This is your core business. Loose sight of this and perish. Many have.

There is no perfect airplane. There is no perfect kit. There is no 
perfect manual. If you spent all your resources reacting to customer 
feedback and suggestions you will chase your tail right down the drain. 
You must spend the resources needed to keep the fantasy alive and moving 
forward. If you don't know what the fantasy is then you were the wrong 
guy to buy Lancair.

If there is is one major deficiency in the status quo it is the under 
utilization of the customer base resource. Customers a resource? How is 
that possible? You are a customer. QED.

Regarding the manual, the existence of so many flying airplanes is proof 
that the manual is just fine the way it is. Few love it, but it gets the 
job done. Most importantly, I do not believe that anyone has not 
purchased a kit because they thought the manual was inadequate. There is 
a reason to change it however. That reason is to make your (Lancair 
employees in general) job easier and free up invaluable human resources. 
That change would be to make the manual a web site. Instructions, 
drawings, photos would all be posted on a secure site. A revision list 
would be hyper linked the the relevant sections in the manual. Updates 
would be immediately available to everyone. An online form (similar to 
this one) would answer builders questions by the next business day. The 
manual section would be hyper linked to the question, and to the answer. 
The builder would read a section in the manual, any questions that 
related to that section and the answers. The builder can print any need 
sections and then discard them after they are soaked with epoxy.

Periodic "snapshots" of the manual would be available on CD for a 
nominal fee. Paper copies would also be available for a fee to those 
truly technology impaired.

The experts who currently answer builders' questions on the phone are 
your most precious resource. Why do they have to answer the same 
question over and over? After all, shouldn't they be working on keeping 
the fantasy alive?

You have a tremendous free resource available to sustain and build your 
new business. The only question is if you have the vision to use it.

Regards
Brent Regan