Building a Better Engine

When the time came for them to build an engine that could propel their glider through the air, the Wright brothers faced a situation that was analogous to Mindy's. At that time, many engines existed, but the engines that could generate enough power to propel the glider as fast as the brothers needed also weighed too much. Their weight would push the airplanes down with greater force than the lift that these engines could help generate. To address this problem the Wright brothers performed calculations for the power, speed, thrust, and weight of the engine that they would need. They sent these numbers to the various companies that manufactured engines and asked them to build the engine they required. Ten companies responded, but none of them could make the engine—at least, not for a price that the brothers could afford.

It may have been fortunate that engine companies could not produce the engine that the Wright brothers needed. They were determined enough to build an airplane that they were willing to figure out how to do it themselves, innovating new ways if they had to. For example, in order to help meet the weight requirements, they developed an aluminum crankcase for their engine. It was the first time people used aluminum to build an engine, and aluminum is still a standard material in airplane construction today. They also had the idea to create propellers as if they were rotating wings. This propeller design creates a horizontal force (or thrust), similar to the way that wings produce vertical force (or lift). They used a chain-and-sprocket mechanism—like the ones familiar to the Wright brothers from their bicycles—to transfer the power from the engines to the propellers. With these and other innovations, the brothers built an engine that could propel their aircraft in a way that would generate lift.

If the Wright brothers had used an engine that the engine companies of their day were selling, they could not have generated sufficient lift (the aerodynamic force) to make their glider achieve flight. Similarly, there are many social and psychological "engines" that will propel a person forward, but not all of them are sufficient to generate lift. Like Mindy, who was upset about her son, people often have problems that focus their attention and propel them to action, but their forward motion does not lift them or others. In cases such as these, the poor designs of our psychological "engines" tend to weigh us down rather than lift us up. Many of the problems that move us forward also weigh us down with inappropriate expectations.

Mindy was weighed down with inappropriate expectations because she expected her son to continue to participate productively in an organization from which he was to be expelled. She was angry because she was comfortable with those expectations and they had been disrupted. She invested enormous energy into trying to return things to the way they had been before. However, when a new situation disrupts our previous expectations, it is often more productive to change our expectations rather than to try to make the world conform to our old ones. If the expectations we have created or learned from past experience are not appropriate, either because we have developed inappropriate expectations or because the situation has changed, we are unlikely to lead—to lift ourselves and others—until we change those expectations.