By John Suzuki, VP of Sales
My son and I went skydiving the other day. For him it was the first time, and although he and I are both terrified of heights, he had listed "jumping out of an airplane at 15,000 feet" on his bucket list. I was most impressed that he and his best buddy didn't chicken out at the last minute like a dozen other friends did.
On the plane we went. As we approached the jump zone at 15,000 feet and got ready to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, I realized that my experience of falling head-first out of the sky and barreling toward my doom at 100 mph must seem a lot like how managers feel when they change software platforms:
1. It's scary. But if I don't do it, I'll always wish I did.
2. There's risk involved. What if the chute doesn't open? Is the ground really that hard?
3. There's cost involved. Will this really be worth it? Can I afford NOT to do this?
4. You sweat. Am I crazy? What am I doing? Did I make the right decision?
5. You jump. OMG, did they pack the chute right? Is my support guy qualified?
6. You're free falling. How do I open and land this parachute thing?
7. Not to worry, your support guy is attached to you.
8. Your chute opens at 4,000 feet and you glide down. Is this cool or what?
9. Kiss the ground. With great support throughout the jump, we had the thrill of a lifetime.
Back on the ground my son and his friend both said "That wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be", and we did high-fives all around.
See? Great support can help make it easy; and we have great support. Too corny? Sorry. We had fun anyway. I now recommend looking at both Escapia and skydiving to every vacation rental manager I know!
How funny John. I recently emailed one of my staff and "Catch Me Now I'm Falling" was the title of the email and the email was about our stage in implementation. Can you guess which stage we are in? Just starting to go live one module at a time.
Posted by: Melinda DiPerna, Founder | September 17, 2009 at 06:13 PM
WOW! Hmmm... Sounds like you're in the "parachute deployed/coming in for a landing" phase. Remember that you can always call me as one of your "backup" parachutes too!
Posted by: John Suzuki | September 18, 2009 at 09:36 AM
That looks like so much fun. Glad you experienced it, its something you will always remember!
Posted by: Skydive | October 20, 2009 at 01:50 AM