You go where you look.
The most expensive lesson I ever learned, and the one I have spent twenty years engineering around.
A new GSX-R, bought Memorial Day weekend, 2005. By November, 8,400 miles on the clock, half of them on one wheel.
That same year, a friend's independent shop. Brakes, rotations, the tire machine, lube-oil-filter run like a pit stop.
Two machines. One year. One operator.
3.3 miles. Stand up. One wheel.
I had hung them for years. That day the machine did exactly what I told it. Right up until I told it the wrong thing.
Then I made the one mistake
every rider knows.
Target fixation. I locked my eyes on the one thing I did not want to hit. The bike only ever went where I was looking.
Slid 350 feet.
Launched off a culvert.
Landed in the softest dirt on the planet, which is the only reason I am writing this. I walked away with a broken body and one permanent lesson.
You go where you look.
The only lesson a motorcycle ever teaches, written in capital letters.
Every business is a machine.
It responds to nothing but the engineer's input. Not intentions, not meetings, not the strategy deck. Input, response, destination.
Most companies are target-fixated on
the guardrail and calling it strategy.
The competitor. The bad review. The vanity metric. Fixate on it and that is exactly where the business goes. Pick the destination instead. Make every input serve it.
I am the
onboard engineer.
Because the job has never changed. Figure out how the machine actually works, then make it work for the person paying the bill.