Pro What?

A little less than a year ago, I got my kids aquariums.   There were few fish for each and an apple snail for each.  One day I had to clean a tank and I moved all of the animals to the other.  Days later I noticed a clutch of eggs on the bottom of the clean aquarium.    I didn’t think much of it until very tiny snails began to appear in the second aquarium.  All too suddenly we had 30 snails.

Egg management has become serious business.  The eggs require high humidity but not immersion.  So egg management requires removing the clutches soon after they are laid and putting them someplace dry or immersing them in water.   Because the snails are a non-native species, releasing them isn’t an option.  I’ve come up with a few kind euphemisms for what I’m doing but the short form is I’m killing the eggs so that I don’t have hundreds of snails.

My six year old saw me removing a clutch this weekend.  Thus began a conversation that covered some familiar topics.  When does life begin?  What is the value of a potential life.? How high up the evolutionary chain does a life have to be for it to matter?  What are the consequences of keeping animals in captivity?  Why do I get to decide.  It was tense.  She was at turns angry and tearful, but reasonable throughout.  In the end she concluded I was evil.

The world has so much in store for her.

Fatherhood

A friend of mine posted something thought-provoking on parenthood.

Not much to add.  I hope there’s not too much to be forgiven by the time mine understand what he’s saying.

Distilled wisdom

Rumsfeld’s Rules
Advice on government, business and life.
By Donald Rumsfeld

The Wall Street Journal, Monday, January 29, 2001

Many of these rules, reflections and quotations came from my role as chairman of the “transition team” for President Ford and my service as White House chief of staff. Others came from experiences as a U.S. naval aviator, a member of Congress, ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, secretary of defense, presidential Middle East envoy, business executive, chairman of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, and other experiences.

These reflections and quotations have been gathered over the past 40 years. Credit is given where known. As the quotation has it, “If it’s not true, it’s still well founded.” — Unknown

Serving in the White House
(for the White House chief of staff and senior staff)

• Don’t accept the post or stay unless you have an understanding with the president that you’re free to tell him what you think “with the bark off” and you have the courage to do it.

• Visit with your predecessors from previous administrations. They know the ropes and can help you see around some corners. Try to make original mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs.

• Don’t begin to think you’re the president. You’re not. The Constitution provides for only one.

• In the execution of presidential decisions work to be true to his views, in fact and tone.

• Know that the immediate staff and others in the administration will assume that your manner, tone and tempo reflect the president’s.

• Learn to say “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often.

• If you foul up, tell the president and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.

• Walk around. If you are invisible, the mystique of the president’s office may perpetuate inaccurate impressions about you or the president, to his detriment. After all, you may not be as bad as they’re saying.

• In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead, a president must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership.

• Be precise. A lack of precision is dangerous when the margin of error is small.

• Preserve the president’s options. He may need them.

• It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.

• Don’t divide the world into “them” and “us.” Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.

• Amid all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work toward those goals.

• Don’t say “the White House wants.” Buildings can’t want.

• Leave the president’s family business to him. You will have plenty to do without trying to manage the first family. They are likely to do fine without your help.

• Make decisions about the president’s personal security. He can overrule you, but don’t ask him to be the one to counsel caution.

• Being vice president is difficult. Don’t make it tougher.

• Don’t automatically obey presidential directives if you disagree or if you suspect he hasn’t considered key aspects of the issue.

• The price of being close to the president is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.

• You and the White House staff must be and be seen to be above suspicion. Set the right example.

• The role of White House chief of staff is that of a “javelin catcher.” — Jack Watson

• Don’t speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn’t walk in their shoes.

• Remember the public trust. Strive to preserve and enhance the integrity of the office of the presidency. Pledge to leave it stronger than when you came.

• Don’t blame the boss. He has enough problems.

Keeping Your Bearings in the White House

• Enjoy your time in public service. It may well be one of the most interesting and challenging times of your life.

• Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles de Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

• Let your family, staff and friends know that you’re still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.

• Have a deputy and develop a successor. Don’t be consumed by the job or you’ll risk losing your balance. Keep your mooring lines to the outside world — family, friends, neighbors, people out of government and people who may not agree with you.

• When asked for your views, by the press or others, remember that what they really want to know is the president’s views.

• Most of the 50 or so invitations you receive each week come from people inviting the president’s chief of staff, not you. If you doubt that, ask your predecessor how many he received last week.

• Keep your sense of humor. As Gen. Joe Stillwell said, “The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind.”

• Be yourself. Follow your instincts. Success depends, at least in part, on the ability to “carry it off.”

• Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

• If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.

• From where you sit, the White House may look as untidy as the inside of a stomach. As is said of the legislative process, sausage making and policy making shouldn’t be seen close-up. Don’t let that panic you. Things may be going better than they look from the inside.

• Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the president and do wonders for your performance.

• If you are lost — “climb, conserve, and confess.” — U.S. Navy SNJ Flight Manual

Doing the Job in the White House

• Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them, and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on. The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House.

• You will launch many projects but have time to finish only a few. So think, plan, develop, launch and tap good people to be responsible. Give them authority and hold them accountable. Trying to do too much yourself creates a bottleneck.

• Think ahead. Don’t let day-to-day operations drive out planning.

• Plan backward as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

• Don’t “overcontrol” like a novice pilot. Stay loose enough from the flow that you can observe, calibrate and refine.

• A president needs multiple sources of information. Avoid excessively restricting the flow of paper, people, or ideas to the president, though you must watch his time. If you overcontrol, it will be your “regulator” that controls, not his. Only by opening the spigot fairly wide, risking that some of his time may be wasted, can his “regulator” take control.

• If in doubt, move decisions up to the president.

• When you raise issues with the president, try to come away with both that decision and also a precedent. Pose issues so as to evoke broader policy guidance. This can help to answer a range of similar issues likely to arise later.

• See that the president, the cabinet and the staff are informed. If cut out of the information flow, their decisions may be poor, not made, or not confidently or persuasively implemented.

• Don’t allow people to be excluded from a meeting or denied an opportunity to express their views because their views differ from the president’s views, the views of person who calls the meeting, or your views. The staff system must have integrity and discipline.

• When the president is faced with a decision, be sure he has the recommendations of all appropriate people, or that he realizes he does not have their views and is willing to accept the consequence. They will be out of sync, unhappy and less effective if they feel they are or are seen as having been “cut out.”

• Don’t be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the president or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure, and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.

• If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.

• One of your tasks is to separate the “personal” from the “substantive.” The two can become confused, especially if someone rubs the president wrong.

• Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented.

• If a prospective presidential approach can’t be explained clearly enough to be understood well, it probably hasn’t been thought through well enough. If not well understood by the American people, it probably won’t “sail” anyway. Send it back for further thought.

• Many people around the president have sizeable egos before entering government, some with good reason. Their new positions will do little to moderate their egos.

• Move decisions out to the cabinet and agencies. Strengthen them by moving responsibility, authority and accountability their direction.

• Control your time. If you’re working off your in-box, you’re working off the priorities of others. Be sure the staff is working on what you move to them from the president, or the president will be reacting, not leading.

• Look for what’s missing. Many advisers can tell a president how to improve what’s proposed or what’s gone amiss. Few are able to see what isn’t there.

• Think of dealing with Congress as a “revolving door.” You’ll be back to today’s opponents for their help tomorrow. Presidential proposals will need a member of Congress’s support on some issue, at some time, regardless of philosophy, party or their positions on other issues. Don’t allow White House links to members to be cut because they may disagree on some or even many issues.

• Work continuously to trim the White House staff from your first day to your last. All the pressures are to the contrary.

• Don’t do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of the Washington Post.

Serving in Government

• Public servants are paid to serve the American people. Do it well.

• Congress, the press and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.

• It is very difficult to spend “federal (the taxpayers’) dollars” so that the intended result is achieved.

• Beware when any idea is promoted primarily because it is “bold, exciting, innovative and new.” There are many ideas that are “bold, exciting, innovative and new,” but also foolish.

• The federal government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments.

• As former Rep. Tom Curtis of Missouri said, “Public money drives out private money.”

• Strive to make proposed solutions as self-executing as possible. As the degree of discretion increases, so too do bureaucracy, delay and expense.

• Presidential leadership needn’t always cost money. Look for low- and no-cost options. They can be surprisingly effective.

• Include others. As former Sen. Pat Moynihan (D., N.Y.) said, “Stubborn opposition to proposals often has no other basis than the complaining question, ‘Why wasn’t I consulted?’ ”

• Watch for the “not invented here” syndrome.

• “The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.” — Pat Moynihan

• If in doubt, don’t.

• If still in doubt, do what’s right.

• Treat each federal dollar as if it was hard earned. It was — by a taxpayer.

• “Try to analyze situations intelligently, anticipate problems and move swiftly to solve them. However, when you’re up to your ears in alligators, it is difficult to remember that the reason you’re there is to drain the swamp.” — Unknown

• “In Washington, D.C., the size of a farewell party may be directly proportional to the honoree’s new position and their prospective ability to dispense largess.” — D.G. Cross

• “Every government looking at the actions of another government and trying to explain them always exaggerates rationality and conspiracy, and underestimates incompetency and fortuity.” — Silberman’s Law of Diplomacy, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Laurence Silberman

Politics, Congress and the Press

• First rule of politics: you can’t win unless you’re on the ballot.

• Second rule: If you run, you may lose.

• And if you tie, you do not win.

• Politics is human beings; it’s addition rather than subtraction.

• “The winner is not always the swiftest, surest or smartest. It’s the one willing to get up at 5 a.m. and go to the plant gate to meet the workers.” — Unknown

• In politics, every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error. Enjoy it.

• The most underestimated risk for a politician is overexposure.

• When someone with a rural accent says, “I don’t know much about politics,” zip up your pockets.

• If you try to please everybody, somebody’s not going to like it.

• Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.

• “The oil can is mightier than the sword.” — former Sen. Everett Dirksen (R., Ill.)

• Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.

• Remember where you came from.

• Members of the House and the Senate are not there by accident. Each managed to get there for some reason. Learn what it was and you will know something important about them, about our country and about the American people.

• With the press there is no “off the record.”

• “There are only three responses to questions from the press: (1) ‘I know and will tell you’; (2) ‘I know and I can’t tell you’; and (3) ‘I don’t know.’ ” — Dan Rather

For the Secretary of Defense

• The secretary of defense is not a super general or admiral. His task is to exercise civilian control over the department for the commander in chief and the country.

• Reserve the right to get into anything, and exercise it. Make your deputies and staff realize that, although many responsibilities are delegated, no one should be surprised when the secretary engages an important issue.

• Manage the interaction between the Pentagon and the White House. Unless you establish a narrow channel for the flow of information and “tasking” back and forth, the process can quickly become chaotic.

• Normal management techniques may not work in the department. When pushing responsibility downward, be sure not to contribute to a weakening of the cohesion of the services; what cohesion exists has been painfully achieved over the decades.

• When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don’t eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.

• Avoid public spats. When a department argues with other government agencies in the press, it reduces the president’s options.

• Establish good relations between the departments of Defense and State, the National Security Council, CIA and the Office of Management and Budget.

• Be sure key U.S. ambassadors are informed on defense activities in their countries.

• Develop a personal relationship with the chairman and each of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They are almost always outstanding public servants. In time of crisis, those relationships can be vital.

• “If you get the objectives right, a lieutenant can write the strategy.” — Gen. George Marshall

• Napoleon was asked, “Who do you consider to be the greatest generals?” He responded, “The victors.”

On Business

• When you initiate new activities, find things you are currently doing that you can discontinue — whether reports, activities, etc. It works, but you must force yourself to do it. Always keep in mind your “teeth-to-tail ratio.”

• Watch the growth of middle-level management. Don’t automatically fill vacant jobs. Leave some positions unfilled for six to eight months to see what happens. You will find you won’t need to fill some of them.

• Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.

• Find ways to decentralize. Move decision-making authority down and out. Encourage a more entrepreneurial approach.

• Prune — prune businesses, products, activities, people. Do it annually.

• Know your customers!

• Develop a few key themes and stick to them. It works. Repetition is necessary. “Quality.” “Customers.” “Innovation.” “Service.” Whatever!

• That which you require be reported on to you will improve, if you are selective. How you fashion your reporting system announces your priorities and sets the institution’s priorities.

• People do better in staff jobs if they have had operational experience. It helps to look at things from others’ perspectives.

• Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers — they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.

• Beware of the argument that “this is a period for investment; improvements will come in the out years.” The tension between the short term and long term can be constructive, but there is no long term without a short term.

• Too often management recommends plans that look like Bob Hope’s nose or a hockey stick. The numbers go down the first year or so and then up in the later years. If you accept hockey-stick plans, you will find they will be proposed year after year.

• The way to do well is to do well.

• Don’t let the complexity of a large company mask the need for performance. Bureaucracy is a conspiracy to bring down the big. And it can. You may need to be large to compete in the world stage, but you need to find ways to avoid allowing that size to mask poor performance.

• “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” — Old military axiom

• Remember: A’s hire A’s and B’s hire C’s.

• “The advantage of a free market is that it allows millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, allocating resources — labor, capital and human ingenuity — in a manner that can’t be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner.” — Friedrich A. Hayek

On Life (and Other Things)

• “You can’t pray a lie.” — Mark Twain, “Huckleberry Finn”

• “It takes everyone to make a happy day.” — Marcy Rumsfeld, age seven

• “The most important things in life you cannot see — civility, justice, courage, peace.” — Unknown

• “Persuasion is a two-edged sword — reason and emotion — plunge it deep.” — Prof. Lewis Sarett Sr.

• “The art of listening is indispensable for the right use of the mind. It is also the most gracious, the most open and the most generous of human habits.” — Attributed to R. Barr, St. John’s College, Annapolis, Md.

• “In writing if it takes over 30 minutes to write the first two paragraphs select another subject.” — Raymond Aron

• “In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking.” — Unknown

• “If you’re coasting, you’re going downhill.” — L.W. Pierson

• “What’s the difference between a good naval officer and a great one? Answer: About six seconds.” — Adm. Arleigh Burke

• “First law of holes: If you get in one, stop digging.” — Anonymous

• “Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” — James B. Conant

• “When drinking the water, don’t forget those who dug the well.” — Chinese proverb

• “The harder I work, the luckier I am.” — Unknown

• “If it doesn’t go easy, force it.” — G.D. Rumsfeld’s assessment of his son Don’s operating principle at age 10

• “But I am me.” — Nick Rumsfeld, age nine

• “You learn in life there are few plateaus; you are either going up or down.” — Unknown

• Perspective — Maurice Chevalier’s response when asked how it felt to reach 80: “Pretty good, considering the alternative.”

• “For every human problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.” — H.L. Mencken

• Simply because a problem is shown to exist doesn’t necessarily follow that there is a solution.

• “If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.” — Shimon Peres

• “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

• “Most people spend their time on the ‘urgent’ rather than on the ‘important.’ ” — Robert Hutchins

• “If you think you have things under control, you’re not going fast enough.” — Mario Andretti, racecar driver

• “Victory is never final. Defeat is never fatal. It is courage that counts.” — Winston Churchill

• “Intellectual capital is the least fungible kind.” — Unknown

• “The better part of one’s life consists of friendship.” — Abraham Lincoln

• “When you’re skiing, if you’re not falling you’re not trying.” — Donald Rumsfeld

• “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

• “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” — David Hume

• “History marches to the drum of a clear idea.” — W.H. Auden

• “Demographics is destiny.” — John Scanlon

• If you develop rules, never have more than 10.

Mr. Rumsfeld is secretary of defense.

Capacity of a System

What’s the difference between a metaphor and an analogy?  As I begin writing this I went to Google to find out since I’m fond of one of them though I’m not sure which.

A search for “metaphor vs analogy” parted the metaphorical fog enough to imply that what follows is an analogy.

In engineering or managing a system, think of the system as a closed, hollow,  sphere.  The volume of that sphere is the system’s capacity.  The system will do what it is intended to do (or rather “what it does”) for as long as the demand can be contained within that sphere.  As engineers, as we consider capacity we’re concerned with the diameter of the sphere (well just how big is it?  how much does it hold?), and with the nature of the boundary.

The nature of the boundary though is the interesting bit.  What happens as demand expands towards the boundary of the sphere?

• Is the shell of sphere strong and rigid and the demand weak and incompressible?  If so things are simple, if capacity is n-1 units of demand, the nth unit of demand simply won’t fit.  The excess demand just goes elsewhere.
• Is the shell weak and rigid and the demand strong and incompressible?  If so, the nth unit of demand will break the entire system.  Your sphere breaks and holds nothing.
• Is the shell elastic and the demand strong and compressible?  If so there are two limits, the resting limit m-1 and the elastic limit n-1.
  • The mth unit of demand expands the diameter of the shell and all of  the demand units are under pressure.   Performance degrades slightly.
  • the nth unit of demand will break the entire system.  Your sphere breaks and holds nothing.

Mapping this analogy to internet computing systems (what I now do for a living), the size of the sphere can be controlled by adding CPU, memory, storage, bandwidth, etc.    We try to build strong elastic shells with an economically reasonable diameter.  Then we layer the interior of the shell with “pressure” sensors, wacth the exterior for signs of stress.  Sometimes we get it wrong.

We have a shell woven of three different types of elastic fiber (lets call them web, app, and db .  We know a lot about each type of fiber but don’t really understand the nature of the fabric we’ve woven with them.  Therefore, when we want to make the sphere bigger, we just build a bigger sphere around the old and then destroy the old.  But what if what we need is a different mix of fibers?  For now it’s easier to buy more of the same material than it is to engineer new ones.

In our zeal to prevent the shell from cracking (having a machine or more likely a piece of software fail), we ‘ve coated the interior of our sphere with a very thick soft padding.   The padding in our case is a Layer 7 load balancer that queues traffic rather than applying to the components of the system in question.  As much as a 3rd of the interior volume of our sphere is filled with this (metaphorical or analogical?) padding.     Worse, in response to the pressure of increased demand the load balancer takes stressed systems out of service.  The shell actually constricts, squeezing the  remaining demand.  The shell never breaks, but we fail to serve 30% of demand.That’s failure of a sort.   So today, we stripped away all the padding hoping to accomplish two things:

1. We sholuld have increased the useful capacity of the system by 50%.
2. By actually allowing the shell to break we may learn which element of the fabric gave way first and be able to design a better shell.

The High Cost of Living

People complain. It’s just the nature of things.

My current (least) favorite is the keening whine about the escalating cost of health care…

I know someone who suffers from terrible headaches. He’s been being treated with limited success for some time. His doctor gave him samples of a drug that provided complete relief. It doesn’t matter which drug he moved to or from because it turns out that one man’s miracle cure is the next gals placebo. Days before his vacation he asks for a prescription for the new drugs and then balks when he discovers that the pills will cost almost $5 each. He instead renews his old medicine which is more generously covered under his insurance. On one level I respect this, it’s his money, his head, and his decision to make. However, some virulent strain of that thinking has most of the US under the impression that medicine should be cheap or even free.

It’s America, nothing is free.

This person would likely pay an extra $25/night to stay in a hotel room with some marginal luxury advantage (a view, a bigger bed, etc.) over another. Yet he balks at that price for the near-guarantee of a pain free day.

Why shouldn’t it cost a year’s wages to detect/cure/manage a life threatening or debilitating condition?

Warcraft…

I play World of Warcraft…

…when I should be sleeping

…when I should be writing posts

…maybe more than I should.

I’m in a guild…

… they’re nice guys

…but the founders left  (too much work, too much stress)

…the few remaining officers didn’t want the job  and so were going to dissolve it

…and so now I’m the Guild Master 

Woe.

…

Innocence Lost…

Tonight, on the eve of her 4th birthday, my little girl tiptoed (ponderously) downstairs to whisper in my ear. “Daddy, I asked Andy to marry me and he said no because his skin is peach and mine is dark.” I was heartbroken for her. There was no question but that some day some idiot boy was going to hurt her feelings. And there was no question but that some day she would have to confront race as an issue in America. But I thought she had longer.

Two weeks ago we celebrated Martin Luther King’s birthday. At my daughter’s school the observation began a week before. We knew exactly when it started because the questions began that night. “Daddy, is brown beautiful?” Huh? “Is peach beautiful?” Stall! “They’re both beautiful. Why do you ask, honey?” “Because Martin Luther King was a great leader because he said that everybody is equal. Brown people and peach people.” For two more days we heard about race and equality. How many people did Martin Luther King lead, if he was such a great leader?

On Thursday I came home and she burst into tears. “Did you know they shot Martin Luther King?” In four days they had introduced Martin Luther King, race, racism and murder. And two weeks later, as I write this I’m sad. Because I think it was too much too soon.

Since then we’ve entertained questions about mixed marriage (there are at least three in the family), about mixed parentage, about equalit, about leadership. I thought we handled it well. We answered questions at four I thought I might have to address at eight. But then tonight, it came to a head, because she’s trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense. And also because, even today as Barak Obama sweeps up primary victories, not every kid gets the same message when they come back home to talk about Martin Luther King.

So what did I say?  Another post…

I thought she had longer. I know she deserved longer. She was only four, but that was yesterday.

GUMPS

GUMPS is an aviaton mnemonic for the essential pre-landing checklist when operating complex aircraft.
Gas -Having made it all the way here, running out of gas (by forgetting to switch tanks to the one with gas in it for instance), would be an embarassing way to arrive.

Undercarriage – Are the wheels down? You’re going to need them.

Mixture – Air/Fuel mixture. What works at altitude could stop working as you descend.

Prop/Primer – Propeller speed set, primer locked.

Switches – Have you turned on and off all of the things you need to (pitot heat, lights, radios, etc.)?

I’m an amateur pilot (actually a student and an amateur), and I find many metaphors for life in aviation. Landing has frequently and accurately been described as one of the most challenging and fulfilling parts of flight. I therefore find it to be a particularly apt metaphor for the things I like to think about.

There’s a bit of debate about the value of this particular mnemonic in part because it can’t be universally applied.  I think the detractors miss the point.   GUMPS is a reminder of things to take stock of before committing your craft, your self, and your passengers to one of the riskier phases of flight (plummeting toward the ground at 50 or so feet per second).

The exercise of determining the prerequisites for success and ensuring they’re met before you’re in a crisis, that’s GUMPS.

CG

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