We are now at Defcon 1...

Imagine yourself in this situation...

30 years ago, on the 26th of September 1983 the USA launched a Nuclear First Strike against the Soviet Union; five missiles were recorded as being fired from the their Silo's with a strike time of around 30 minutes.

Stanislav Petrov was an officer in the Soviet Air Defence Force, and he was on duty at the command centre for the Oko Nuclear Weapons Early Warning System. As he looked at his readouts, they confirmed that the USA had launched a First Strike Nuclear attack against Moscow.

The protocols associated with the launch of Nuclear Weapons is reassuringly complex, and there are a number of further steps that have to be gone through to confirm a launch. However, back in the days of the Cold War - the Soviets were actually expecting an attack from NATO, they were edgy and nervous.

These nerves were not soothed by the fact that on the 2nd November of that year, NATO was planning an exercise that would simulate the escalation of tensions between the two powers that would result in a coordinated Nuclear attack. 

This "war game" was to be carried out in the Belgian city of Mons, and was scheduled amid the process of deploying the Pershing 2 missiles in Europe.

Stanislav looked at his readout; "5 Nuclear Missiles inbound..."

What he should have done next is escalate the report and seek authorisation to immediately launch a counter strike against the USA and its allies; the clock was ticking and the information he had available told him that in 30 minutes Moscow would be wiped off the map...

What he actually did was think - not with his logical, programmed and military trained brain but with his instinctive intuitive brain. Intuitively he recognised that if the USA was to strike first, it would use more than 5 missiles - it would launch an all out attack to completely disable the Soviet Forces not just really irritate them..

He looked for other evidence to support the data and he found that the radar was blank and other intelligence sources were quiet..

So he made a decision that could have saved all our lives - he went against the protocol and effectively ignored the early warning in the belief that it was a malfunction. After 30 minutes when Moscow hadn't been flattened, he was proven to be correct. 

The problem was technical and the "attack" never actually happened...

Use your KPI's...

We have three methods to make decisions;

Knowledge Based - logic and information based - from the Head...

Passion Based - likes dislikes and emotional drives - from the Heart

Instinct Based - intuition -  "Gut feeling"

Some of the most important decisions we make are not logical at all; for example...

1. Getting Married - well at least getting married to me anyway..

2. Having Children - we get the children we deserve, so we have been really lucky..

3. House - logic says we should live in a small flat on a bus route...

4. Car - if you are not driving an electric car you're not Logical...

Our Passions can sometimes get us into trouble, but in my experience, instinct very rarely lets us down. When we were starting out we put all our savings in to building our business because we believed in what we were doing and knew that we would make it work..

Lesson Learned..

Out of the blue we received a call from someone who wanted to offer me shares in an international business, a high salary, car and a lucrative bonus scheme too. When you're shopping a Aldi and travelling alone because the Dog Kennels cost more than the Hotels we could afford, this seemed like a Golden Opportunity..

We met with the CEO, he took us to lunch and introduced us to his partner and the rest of his team - this looked really interesting..

On the drive back  Lynn and I we were silent in the car, as we got close to home we glanced at each other and knew that we both felt the same way. We couldn't explain it logically but we just knew this was not the opportunity we wanted.

When we got back to the office I called and emailed the CEO kindly declining his generous offer - and back to Aldi we went...

Two things happened that day. One the one hand we knew that the opportunity just didn't feel right (fundamentally we didn't like the people, product or system; I would have simply been a mercenary chasing the money..) and on the other, we realised that we were both absolutely committed to our original vision for our business.

We also learned that having a Plan B or an Escape Route is really distracting...

Since then we have had the privilege of travelling , working with the best clients in the world and achieving the Vision we wrote down all those years ago..

So the message is to check your KPI's and make sure you are following your Passion, but also your Instinct; Logic and Knowledge are simply not enough... 

When it comes to the crunch - what will you do...?