Consider what it takes to build an aircraft carrier and put it out to sea. Tens of thousands of contractors crossing multiple disciplines, organisations, states and countries are involved. Another ten thousand or so do the actual construction. About five thousand sailors then sail it out of port. Finally, a handful of pilots take to the sky.

And so the ultimate success of seventy to eighty thousand people depends on these few pilots – the only ones to actually make contact with the targets of the mission.

Your R&D, your production staff, your suppliers, your executives and their staff built this amazing product. But your customer-facing salespeople and engineers are the carrier pilots. They have a delicate task upon which everyone else’s future depends.

And so they can never be too well trained – never too well prepared.