North by Northwest

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. –Abraham Lincoln

Abe asked two very important questions we should answer when deciding what to do and how to do it:

• Do you know where you are?
• Do you know where you’re going?

I believe the questions are universal in their relevance, scalable in their scope, and elusively difficult to answer. Interestingly enough, for those of us who suffer from boundless curiosity, it applies way down to the sub-atomic particle level in that difficulty. (My fellow nerds will likely be jumping up and down citing the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. To all the others, sorry for taking you down the rabbit trail..)

The difficulty is not so much an academic issue as much as one of picking the right lens to put on how to determine “where you are” or “where you’re going.” In other words, the choice of the data we will collect, what we chose to measure, is very dependent on one of picking a direction, and not picking an infinite number of alternatives. The probabilities of picking the best direction can often be small. It is a simpler decision when we are taking a road trip and can look over a road map, or better yet, punch in the destination into our GPS unit. North and south are not as easy to determine in our enterprises.

Determining direction and how to measure it for an enterprise is complex. There are hundreds of books out and about that will argue against this point with superficial assertions about simply measuring quality, cost and time. And, if you prefer to look ahead through a lens of history, take a hard look at the behavior of the stock markets during the last year before deciding. Ask the poor souls caught in an earthquake or a tsunami, how the look ahead was to them, just before… Look at the measures of cost, time and quality associated with mortgage backed derivatives that built an economy on a house of cards, a hand with lots of Jacks. I find that the more challenging an analogy we chose to think this through, the closer we may get to helpful focus.

Last year, while doing some development on business agility, how to measure, and execute it, a very bright colleague suggested that we consider competitive sailing as a metaphor. I believe his insight was nothing short of brilliant. Let’s today start some interesting poking about sailing as a framework for discussion. My hope is that those of you who are far more knowledgeable about sailing can be generous and fill in the many blanks. My goal today is to test the goodness of fit for our model. I will limit these attributes to a few in hopes that you add and edit going forward. Think about how to measure where you are and where you are going with each. So here are a few observations to start off:

• Winning the total race is a clear objective. Only one team takes the cup home.
• But winning requires that you outperform others who do not want for you to win, the competition. Do we know how well they are doing?
• The elements and environment will change, sometimes unpredictably and severely.
• Things will go right and things will go wrong, many requiring immediate attention.
• Many things matter, some critically. You need to know which and when. Wrong guesses are costly.
• Strategy, planning, preparation, execution and responsiveness will all matter.
• The race requires that many decisions be made, according to plan or according to unplanned events.
• Balance is essential between the execution and the evolving strategy, between control and flexibility, between special skills and team synergy, …, between lots of stuff.
• Velocity usually matters more than position.
• Talent matters, technology matters, process matters, agility matters, awareness matters, courage matters, resilience matters, experience matters … leadership matters.
• Often the difference among competitors is small.

Be it the America’s Cup, the Volvo Round the World, or a local regatta, I believe that today’s challenges will favor those that can tack and get to the finish line against the wind.