If you’ve seen Top Gun: Maverick , you remember the line: “It’s not the plane—it’s the pilot.” That one sentence captures a truth most leaders miss. We spend so much time chasing better tools, teams, and technology that we forget the performance gap usually isn’t in the system—it’s in the person flying it. In business, as in aviation, the pressure test exposes training. When turbulence hits, you don’t rise to the occasion; you fall to your level of preparation. The question i