Thomas Salme was a maintenance engineer who decided to be a pilot. He didn’t go to flight school, however. He simply printed out a flying permit on 8.5 x 11 computer paper at his home, then trained for a few hours in a flight simulator, got into a Boeing 737 and started to fly. For 13 years, he flew thousands of passengers without incident. A couple of months ago, he was finally arrested.

Here’s a question: if you’re getting on a plane tomorrow and Thomas Salme is in the cockpit, do you stay on the flight knowing all of the information above? My guess is that you don’t, and my grandmother testing around the office seems to bear this out. But here’s the real question: why not?

This is a guy with more than a decade of successful flying time who takes part in the same intensive annual training of his licensed counterparts. He has the experience. He has the aptitude. Why not trust him to jet you off to a weekend in Luxembourg?

There’s really no reason. Some people mention his ethics. And while those are obviously questionable, ethics don’t safely land a 737. What makes most people nervous about Thomas Salme is that he doesn’t have a real pilot’s license. They want that piece of paper.

Stop for a second and take a look around your office. Think about the people you trust to do a great job. Then think about the people you don’t. In today’s corporate environment, all of them have at least one piece of paper that says they’re capable. Many of them probably have a second piece of paper with the prestigious letters M.B.A. But I bet you didn’t think much about those pieces of paper when it came to who you trusted.

Now think about yourself. Why should people trust you to do your job? Because of your piece of paper? Unless you’re a heart surgeon or a NASA engineer who accidentally stumbled onto this post after googling “weekend in Luxembourg,” probably not.

If you’re in marketing or advertising, people trust you because you have a history of success. You did something. Perhaps you did a lot of somethings. You got noticed. And because success breeds success, someone chose you to help them become more successful. Then someone else. And finally you were the one making the choices.

But again: did all that success have anything to do with your piece of paper? Did your Marketing 201 class really help that much? It may have helped you get into a door, but it didn’t make you successful. Experience and intuition got you where you are today. (That, or you knew whose buttocks were worthy of your lips.)

A lot of us are Thomas Salmes. We have a piece of paper that means very little to our practical, day-to-day jobs. We’re not really cut out for our jobs, because there’s no template. How many times have you made a million-dollar decision on a moment’s notice and thought: “Phew. If it wasn’t for Professor Higgenbotham’s sage advice on embracing the cultural zeitgeist while concepting, I probably would have just tried to sell a client a multi-year campaign based on a loose combination of Cop Rock and Homeboys in Outer Space“?

Because of this reliance on earned wisdom and first instincts, it often feels like we’re faking it. And by any academic definition, we are. But people keep getting on our plane and we keep flying. And why not? We have the experience and the aptitude. They have the increase in sales or brand recognition.

So why not get on Thomas Salme’s plane? I could see why you wouldn’t have been thrilled to knowingly be on his maiden voyage. But after thirteen years of success, the guy obviously knows what he’s doing. In fact, I’d sumbit the only reason I might not fly with Mr. Salme is because of that success. When you’ve gone thirteen years without incident in your job, you’re overdue for a decent-sized failure. And a downed 737 is a much bigger catastrophe than greenlighting Homeboys in Outer Space. (Although, I can’t be as definitive about the disaster that was Cop Rock.)

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