As well as being a fighter pilot, Merewether's Adam Loong was an instructor - like the kind in the 1980s flick, Top Gun.
Adam flew F/A-18 Hornets before teaching pilots to become fighter pilots as "an FCI or Fighter Combat Instructor".
"I hate using the term, but it's the Top Gun equivalent," he said.
"I was director of that course for a couple of years. I did a lot of teaching. I taught a lot of pilots to fly the Hornet.
"A lot of young kids who I chat with say they want to be a fighter pilot. The best advice I ever give them is, it's a cliche, but you've got to work hard."
Adam said there was "a lot of failure the whole way through" fighter pilot training.
The way to get through it was having an "attitude of continuous improvement".
This is something he has taken into the business world.
"The fighter pilot culture is one where you're not expected to be perfect. And you're constantly reviewing and looking at ways to do things better," he said.
"If you have that attitude, or if you can build that attitude into yourself as a young pilot, then it's impossible to fail overall."
He has a start-up company called Deba.
"It teaches people how to be better leaders and instil that culture of continuous improvement into their organisation."
The aim is to teach the fighter pilot mindset to businesses through Deba, which is the nickname fighter pilots give to a debrief.
"The core element of the fighter pilot ethos is debriefing. We'll do a mission for an hour and debrief for three hours. It's that concept of, every little thing we do, how can we do that better?
"When you do that over and over again for 20 years and everyone is doing it around you, everyone gets very comfortable talking about how they can do things better.
"If you're always debriefing, or have the mindset to debrief, the culture should flow."
He believes many workplaces don't like that concept because they reward people who do things well.
"To admit you've done something wrong can hurt your career and progression. Traditional performance management is about getting together once a year to tick a box and move on.
"That instils a culture where everyone hides mistakes. They don't want to admit any shortcomings."
As a fellow named Elbert Hubbard once said: "The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you'll make one".
Truegain and No Gain
It was great to see the Newcastle Herald front page on Friday of the NSW government awarding a $5.6 million contract to clean up Rutherford's Truegain waste oil refinery.
Pardon this terrible pun, but this really is a true gain.
It was also great to see local politicians - like Maitland MP Jenny Aitchison - and authorities supporting a clean-up of terrible pollution in the Hunter.
It's a pity the opposite happened in Lake Macquarie with Pasminco. A whole lot of lead pollution remains around Boolaroo and Speers Point.
When it came to a clean-up of the Pasminco pollution in residential and public properties, the line from the government was pretty much: "A penny saved is a penny gained". That was no gain, though, to the good folks of Boolaroo.
Joke of the Week
I don't have a carbon footprint. I drive everywhere.
