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Learn from Lion Air
Edward Suhadi comment 0 Comments

I wrote not long ago about capacity.

The massive Lion Air delays drama that just happened a few weeks ago reminds me of another thing about capacity:

You will be broken if you are operating above your capacity.

Seems like common sense. The car engine that stops running when it is over-heated. The travelling bag that will rip open if it was carrying more than it should.

We often forget that life is exactly like that too.

My mom once said, “Cheating husbands always start to cheat when they have more money than they’re ready to hold. Suddenly there’s all this money and he doesn’t have the strong heart to not be playing with his family future and do what’s right. If you’re not ready, wealth will ruin you a lot more faster than poverty would.”

She’s got a point there.

You know lottery winners? They didn’t last. If you google them up usually they are more miserable now after all the money is gone.

Lion Air impresses a lot of people when they say they are buying 500 trillion rupiah worth of new planes. Expansion, expansion, expansion. Glamorous. The sweet smell of success.

But last week hellish breakdown was an obvious display of over-capacity.

For the vision of a massive, ambitious expansion: The leader is not ready, the management is not ready, the staff is not ready, the fleet is not ready. Everything is working on a fragile and wobbly foundation, and if there’s just one little thing that snapped, everything will come tumbling down. We all know this story will not end here. Lion’s delays and bad service will continue to happen. God forbid it will go further than that.

So if you have not achieve that level of success, maybe you have to be grateful and know that it is a good thing. Maybe you’re not ready yet. Maybe it’s for your own good. Maybe you’re still standing and unbroken because you’re given things according to your limit.

Because if you’re ready, they will come.

Oh they will.