Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is dangerous. He blows up relationships like he blows up planes. My theory is that his career advice is dangerous, too (not unlike another action hero I’ve written about before). Here is some evidence from the original Top Gun film that supports my theory:
“Maverick, it’s not your flying, it’s your attitude. The enemy’s dangerous, but right now you’re worse. Dangerous and foolish. You may not like who’s flying with you, but whose side are you on?” — Iceman
“That’s right! Ice… man. I am dangerous.” — Maverick
Maverick’s Career Advice is Dangerous
After more than 30 years of service as one of the US Navy’s top aviators, the blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick catches up with Tom Cruises’s Maverick living in an airplane hangar in the desert after decades of going fast in planes and on motorcycles, while dodging professional advancement and pushing away friends and family. Except for Val Kilmer’s Iceman, whose role is reprised (emotionally!) to suggest that a little bit of danger might just save the world, Mav doesn’t have a lot of allies left in the world.
Uncomfortably re-inserted at Top Gun, Mitchell is asked to train elite performers for an impossible mission (wait…this sounds like a different awesome movie?!) during which time he explores growth mindset and the art of possibility with his students, challenges the bottom-line-thinking of his superiors, and demonstrates dangerous career advice that you probably shouldn’t follow.
He breaks expensive things
Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, Maverick spectacularly explodes a very expensive jet prototype. This is what insurers and underwriters often refer to as a “business interruption” (BI). By the end of the two films Maverick is responsible for three crashed/exploded planes and one irreparable F-18 that is so twisted from g-forces that it might never fly again. Together, these machines probably cost taxpayers over $250 million USD (adjusted for inflation and totally guessing what a jet prototype costs these days). Corporate business interruptions are on the rise around the world and actions like the ones on display that the US Navy’s beloved ace are at the heart of the problem.
While business interruptions are not only higher in precarious industries like, you know, warfare, it is important to note that, according to a recent Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) report, “the majority of BI claims originate from technical or human factors (88%) and not from natural catastrophes.” The report goes on to note that the top ten causes of BI loss account for over 90% of such claims by value, with, get this, “fire and explosion being the top cause, accounting for 59% of all BI claims globally.”
Pushing institutional property to its limits might give you a rush, but it’s unlikely that never shutting down your laptop or flooring the gas pedal of your company car is going to push anyone’s limits or achieve better outcomes. Just restart and accept the updates, man.
He has trust issues
While Maverick excels at trusting his instincts in the cockpit to achieve great outcomes, he doesn’t trust much else in his life. We learn from her daughter that Mav broke Penny Benjamin’s heart at least once and that he “pulled Rooster’s papers” so that his deceased best friend Goose’s son, Rooster, didn’t make it into the academy, setting back the kid’s career by four years. (Yes, this is a phrase I just wrote based on real words from the movie).
Building trusting relationships is essential for realizing career potential in ourselves and others. According to HBR’s Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss, trust is perhaps the most important asset that a leader can possess:
We think of trust as precious, and yet it’s the basis for almost everything we do as civilized people. Trust is the reason we’re willing to exchange our hard-earned paychecks for goods and services, pledge our lives to another person in marriage, cast a ballot for someone who will represent our interests. We rely on laws and contracts as safety nets, but even they are ultimately built on trust in the institutions that enforce them. We don’t know that justice will be served if something goes wrong, but we have enough faith in the system that we’re willing to make high stakes deals with relative strangers.
In fairness to Mitchell, he does earn the trust of his colleagues by being a legit, once-in-two-generations badass pilot and is bonding with Rooster following their harrowing experience. Whether he can convert what Frei and Morriss call “the core drivers of trust” – one of which is logic (“I know you can do it; your reasoning and judgment are sound” – into professional advancement (or fulfillment) or, more importantly, a trusting relationship with Penny Benjamin, is for the audience to imagine.
He just does
Okay, I totally understand that split-second decision-making is essential for many jobs, such as fighter pilot, because, as Maverick tells his students, “You don’t have time to think up there. If you think you’re dead.” But are fighter pilots just doing or not thinking? I don’t know because I’m not a fighter pilot, but some economists and behavioural psychologists have investigated this idea.
A more likely explanation is that Maverick has internalized a mental model for making split-second decisions. Once such model, the OODA Loop – “OODA stands for “observe, orient, decide, act” – was developed by US Air Force Colonel John Boyd and is a popular amongst fighter pilots (and their instructors).
Rather than just doing or not thinking, Maverick is actually processing a lot of information really quickly through mental models like OODA and transparent learning practices following training runs, like after action reviews (AARs), that focus on what went well and rewarding good performance.
Really, we should be thinking a lot so that when we need to react it happens in the flow of worklife (or when we’re feeling the need for speed).