You Cannot Fly a Plane with a Motor-Vehicle Engine.

I am probably on a flight every second week, on average. You would think that by now, the fascination would have worn off. It hasn’t.

Every time I sit on a plane, I am still amazed that something so enormous can leave the ground, carry hundreds of people across countries and continents, and somehow land safely at its destination.

I watch the wings. I listen to the engines. I notice the change in sound as we begin to accelerate. I remain fascinated by the fact that this massive machine can move from standing still on the ground to travelling thousands of metres above it.

I have previously written about the fact that there is no silent take-off. Before an aircraft rises, there is noise. There is pressure. There is resistance. The engines work harder, the speed increases, and everything intensifies before the plane finally leaves the ground.

But on my most recent flight, another thought occurred to me: Some of you are trying to fly a plane with a motor-vehicle engine. Your vision is an aircraft. Your ambition is an aircraft. The opportunity in front of you is an aircraft. The impact you want to make is an aircraft. But the systems, resources, skills and capacity powering that vision were designed for a car.

A car engine may be perfectly good. It may be reliable, economical and able to take you from Johannesburg to Durban without a single problem. But no matter how good that engine is, it was never designed to lift an aircraft into the sky. And perhaps that is what is happening in your business. The vision is not necessarily the problem. The destination may not be unrealistic. You may simply be trying to reach it with infrastructure that was never built to carry its weight.

You want to double your revenue, but you are still managing the business from your bank balance. You want to serve bigger clients, but you do not have the systems required to deliver consistently at that level. You want to employ more people, but everything still depends on you. You want investment, but your records, governance and reporting are not investor-ready. You want the business to scale, but you are still operating through memory, scattered WhatsApp messages and heroic last-minute interventions.

You want to move from working with small customers to servicing large corporates, but your compliance, team capacity, cash flow and operating processes have not moved with the vision. Then, when the business struggles to take off, you begin to question the dream:

• Maybe I am not capable.

• Maybe the opportunity is too big for me.

• Maybe I am not working hard enough.

• Maybe I should reduce the vision.

• Maybe I should settle for less.

But sometimes the answer is not to make the aircraft smaller. The answer is to upgrade the engine. Growth requires more than motivation. It requires capacity. There is a dangerous message in entrepreneurship that suggests that if you simply believe hard enough, work long enough and want it badly enough, the business will eventually grow.

My friend, belief matters, discipline matters, hard work matters. But passion cannot perform the function of a system. Hard work cannot replace financial controls and good intentions cannot compensate for a lack of capacity. An exhausted founder cannot permanently substitute for an entire management team.

At some point, the structure of the business must catch up with the size of the dream. A bigger vision needs:

• Stronger operational systems

• Accurate and timely financial information

• Better cash-flow management

• Clear roles and accountability

• Skilled and empowered people

• Consistent processes

• Strong governance and compliance

• The right technology

• Access to appropriate funding

• Leadership capable of operating at the next level

It needs an operating model capable of supporting the altitude you are praying for an Engine Is Not the Only Requirement. The more I think about flying, the more I realise that an aircraft does not leave the ground because of the engine alone.

• It requires fuel.

• It requires skilled pilots.

• It requires a trained crew.

• It requires engineers and ground staff.

• It requires instruments that constantly measure speed, direction, altitude and fuel levels.

• It requires air-traffic control.

• It requires regular maintenance, even when nothing appears to be wrong.

And it requires a runway long enough for the aircraft to build the momentum necessary to take off. Your business is no different. Your vision may be the aircraft, but the business still needs:

• Fuel: The cash flow and working capital required to keep operating

• An engine: The systems and capabilities that power growth

• A cockpit: Reliable information to guide decision-making

• A pilot: Leadership with the competence and courage to navigate uncertainty

• A crew: People who understand their roles and can execute without constant supervision

• Maintenance: Time to review, repair and strengthen the business

• A runway: Enough preparation, discipline and momentum to support take-off

Taking Off Is Not the Same as Staying in the Air. Winning a large contract may get you off the ground, receiving funding may get you off the ground, going viral may get you off the ground, attracting a sudden increase in customers may get you off the ground, but taking off is only part of the journey. Your business must also remain in the air.

That is why growth without infrastructure can be dangerous. An entrepreneur may successfully win the large contract, secure the funding or attract more customers but without the capacity to deliver, that opportunity can expose every weakness in the business. The large contract creates a cash-flow crisis because the business must deliver before it gets paid. The increase in customers damages the brand because the team cannot maintain the quality of service. The funding disappears because there were no financial controls governing how it should be used. The new employees increase costs without increasing productivity because their roles were never clearly defined. Sometimes what looks like a breakthrough becomes a breakdown because the business was not equipped for the weight of the opportunity.

It was not the opportunity that destroyed the business. It was the mismatch between the size of the opportunity and the capacity of the organisation receiving it.

Check the Engine Before Blaming the Runway

Entrepreneurs often blame the market, the economy, the customer, the team or a lack of funding when the business does not move as expected. Sometimes those factors are real but sometimes we need to look underneath the bonnet.

Before asking for a bigger runway, ask yourself: Does my business have the engine required for where I want it to go?

• Do I have systems, or does everything live in my head?

• Do I understand my numbers beyond checking the bank balance?

• Can my team make decisions without waiting for me?

• Do we deliver consistently, or do we depend on last-minute miracles?

• Can the business absorb a large opportunity without collapsing?

• Is our cash flow strong enough to finance growth?

• Are our people equipped for the next level?

• Can the business operate when I am unavailable?

• Can my current structure carry the true weight of my vision?

These are uncomfortable questions, but growth demands honesty. There is nothing wrong with starting with a small engine. Every business begins somewhere. The processes may initially be informal. The founder may have to perform several roles. The systems may be simple because the business itself is still simple.

The problem arises when the business grows, but the engine does not. The same habits, tools and structures that helped you start the business may eventually become the very things preventing it from scaling. The vehicle that helped you survive may not be the one that will help you grow.

Do Not Shrink the Vision, Build the Capacity

Sometimes, after years of struggle, entrepreneurs begin to negotiate their dreams downwards. They assume that because the business has not taken off, the vision must have been too ambitious. But perhaps the dream does not need to become smaller.

Perhaps the business needs to become stronger. Build the capacity, strengthen the systems, develop the people, understand the numbers, improve the controls, introduce accountability, invest in the right technology, and put governance in place. Prepare the business before the opportunity arrives and upgrade the engine before demanding more altitude.

And remember: upgrading the engine does not always mean throwing more money at the business. Sometimes it means simplifying your processes, sometimes it means learning to delegate, sometimes it means letting go of people who are no longer aligned with where the business is going, sometimes it means hiring people who know more than you do, sometimes it means finally confronting the numbers you have been avoiding, sometimes it means saying no to an opportunity because the business is not yet ready to deliver it well and sometimes it means slowing down temporarily so that you can build properly. That is not failure.

Aircrafts undergo maintenance on the ground because safety in the sky depends on what happens before take-off. The work nobody applauds may be the very work that keeps the business in the air. So, keep the vision, keep the ambition, keep believing that the business can reach new heights, but make sure you are building something powerful enough to carry the weight of where you want to go.

Yours in building businesses powerful enough to carry their vision,

The Business Doctor Keitumetse Lekaba