Missing the Target

I spent the last week in Anaheim, California at the Networkers at Cisco Live conference. The closing keynote was presented by John Cleese. He explained that he believed that the reason “why they would hire an elderly English comedian to address a group of technical types of astonishingly high IQ” was because they wanted him to play the role of court jester. He would be able to say things that were true, but too offensive for polite conversation, that the audience would feel obliged to laugh at, lest they loose face. This would let him use humor to get across information that would help them to learn about themselves, but which could easily have offended them.

After a suitable amount of offensive satire, he told a story.

There, now I hope I’ve been sufficiently offensive, so now I can make my contribution to this “geek fest” by telling you why I’ve always been just crazy for guided missiles.

Even as a very small child, these lovely creatures enchanted me far more than stories of catatonic princesses and talking vermin. Probably, because the very first nursery story that my mother ever read me was called “Gordon the Guided Missile.” And this is why the guided missile found this very, very special, very warm place in my heart.

You see, Gordon sets off in pursuit of his target and immediately sends out a signal to discover if he is on course to hit that target. The signal comes back, “No, you’re not on course, Gordon. Change it up a bit and slightly to the left.” And Gordon changes course, as instructed, and then he sends out another signal, “Am I on course now?” And back comes the answer, “No. Adjust your course down a bit and slightly further to the left.” And so he adjusts his course again. And, conscientious little fellow that he is, he sends out another request, “How am I doing now?” And back comes the answer, “Gordon, you’ve still got it wrong. Down more and a foot to the right.”

And the guided missile, its rationality and persistence a lesson to us all, goes on and on, making mistakes, and on and on listening for feedback, and on and on correcting its behavior, until it blows up the nasty enemy thing. And then we applaud Gordon.

And some critic says, “Well, he made hundreds of mistakes, didn’t he?”

Yes, but that didn’t matter did it? Because all of his mistakes were corrected, and so Gordon succeeded in avoiding the one mistake that really matters: missing the target.

— John Cleese, Thursday, July 26, 2007, Anaheim, California

My takeaway from this is that communication — explaining what you have in mind, asking for feedback, and listening to what others have to say — even if it turns out that you are wrong — is much better than not achieving your objective because you didn’t find out you were wrong until it was too late to do anything about it.

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