Good things to do in the Doldrums

“Attitude is the difference between ordeal and adventure”

- Bob Bitchin

It’s not surprising that the origins of so many business analogies can be found at sea. Ever since Noah survived The Flood, seamanship hasn’t just helped to feed us; it’s enabled us to build companies; discover our planet, build whole empires and yes, win a few battles..

Whether we are – as our politicians love to tell us – ‘all in the same boat' is a suggestion ‘so full of holes’ as not to make it onto my manifest here, but many idioms do indeed deserve a berth…

No-one can argue that we are indeed ‘sailing through stormy seas’. We must certainly ‘batten down the hatches’. And in our hospitals, with everyone ‘pulling together’, it’s… ‘all hands on deck’. 

But the contradictions are there as well: we talk about weathering this ‘stormy sea’ whilst at the same time seeing businesses ‘becalmed’, as markets stay closed and workers stay idly at home. Without wind in our sails, many of us are bobbing around, going nowhere…waiting for change, waiting for conditions to drive us forward again.

But we don’t just share a few phrases here, we need to ensure we are also embracing many of the same practices that crews occupy themselves with, when there’s little to do except wait for the breeze to pick up again. 

We need use this valuable downtime by getting busy: adjusting the rigging, servicing our engines, repairing worn-out sails, polishing the brasses, practicing drills.

Many of us are already practicing – albeit remotely - the morale-boosting equivalent of singing shanties and doing jigs on the likes of Zoom (other platforms are available), keeping the crew happy and focussed, and that’s a good thing! But we should consider doing more.

This is also a great opportunity to review, in our business, might just need a few repairs. Take stuff apart, give it a clean and put it together again. Replace the worn components maybe? Fix the parts that are no longer fit for purpose? Practice a few new drills and ways of doing things that will help the ship run more smoothly once under way again? Use the time to pay more attention to the junior crewmembers that you’ve been meaning to do but never had the time?

I’m thinking of a few specific areas here, not just whether the decks are tidy. I’m thinking vital databases (client and market data), business best practices and processes, staff education and coaching (that, in pre-Covid times ‘just keeps getting delayed’). 

For example: how good is your data (accuracy and completeness)? How efficient and well-documented are your practices? How consistent and polished are your sales pitches? How up to date is your web content? Look around you – this is a great chance to get those things sorted!

When the good ship Enterprise starts to get under way again, it is likely there’ll be other stormy seas ahead for all of us. So we all will need to be running a very, very tight ship, with very focussed crews, with the motivation, flexibility and resilience to cope with what lies over the horizon, so let’s be ready, and get busy!