Sailing's 'course-made-good' is a great model for work

I'm not the first person to draw the analogy between sailing and business.

But, as I indulge my new hobby in the beautiful - but unpredictable - environs of Chichester harbour, I'm constantly struck by what can be learnt from a sport that coined the term 'course-made-good'.?

As a business consultant and HR professional I've done my fair share of perpetuating the school of rational management; analyse the environment and your own capabilities, assess your options, set SMART objectives and then rigorously monitor your progress towards the goal, taking corrective actions as needed. There's nothing wrong with any of that, but it's so easy to get lulled into a false belief that there is a straight line to follow.

Sailing - by definition - requires a different mindset. Even in water with no tide, waves or currents under a sky filled with a wind of constant speed and direction, you could not sail straight from your start point to your destination. If the wind is behind you, its possible to beat fairly directly downwind... although ironically the going is much slower than when progressing into the wind. But, when heading upwind, with the sail as an aerofoil you use the difference in pressure in front of and behind the sail to give you forward momentum... and therefore must tack port and starboard at an oblique angle to the wind direction. You cannot just go from A to B... or even know precisely how you will reach B when you leave A.

And then there are the tides, gusts, currents, swells, changes in wind direction and - especially in a harbour - sandbanks and mudflats... and many, many other boats. Sailing takes place in a VUCA* environment. So, while you start with a very clear idea of your destination (and generally don't deviate from it), your course to this point is envisioned (and re-envisioned) and "made good" as you go. You take a starboard tack that you thought might last 50m and then realise that the wind has shifted direction and you've lost power and would be better going about and heading on a port tack over to the leeward side of the channel where the tide is also in your favour before taking a shorter starboard tack again when you run out of water. All the time, you know your destination and have a rough idea of how you'll get there, but the course you end up taking isn’t the one you'd have charted at the start even if you'd tried.

So, of course, sailors study the weather, tide-tables and the navigation charts, and start out with a destination and a rough plan. But to sail is to learn the value of preparing your boat and crew, observing every element of your environment and how you are responding to it, communicating constantly, fine-tuning your performance and picking your way towards your destination via a course-made-good.?

In our organisations, we could do worse than to model our strategic planning and corporate and individual performance management - in this crazy VUCA world we now inhabit - on a 'course-made-good' approach. Fix your destination, then just start making progress in that direction and see how the conditions and your capabilities allow you to perform and where they take you. Don't be afraid to tack when the time is right to take advantage of - or counter - the changing tide, or the wind in your sails, to make good your course. Most importantly stay alert, observe the conditions and your performance, and communicate with your fellow crew.

At Nacro, we're getting ready to re-launch our performance and development review and improvement processes reflecting this approach. While we want to continue to focus on those 'step-back' moments when objectives are set, performance is assessed, the capabilities we will launch with are considered and of course the environment is considered - in the safety of a quiet harbour - we recognise that real performance improvement and development happens through the continuous dialogue and trimming of the sails when we are 'at sea'. So, we're working to equip all our colleagues and their managers to progress along a course-made-good.

*VUCA - volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous