Ever Decreasing Quality Circles

I often wonder how the heck I can come to any 36 foot corporation, fit into the team with a bit of shoehorning, and get results whereas in work life I flounder around with inter-competitive types and generally have not got as far on as I should have in business?

Well I know there is a fair amount attached to hard skills versus soft skills, but maybe that evens out a little? Probably not: i have the hard skills in sailing which mean that I can just be myself and people accept and respect me or I leave the boat. In business I can lack enough from both sets of skills at times, but that is not the root cause of the issue.

Another perspective though is taking work seriously enough to succeed. Ok you can turn up with the lights on until 10pm every night for two years, and still be a "delivery bitch" incessently having your thoughts walked over by ever-younger bosses. Well here you have missed the point of true involvement, determination and team work- or the team-dynamic which comes from the first two descriptors of personal committment there: true involvement and determination.

So in other words your engagement with the job or task means that you are very interactive in moving the whole thing towards a quality delivery. Sound familiar on the race course?

Now I want to get to the core, the meat of this dinner, the heart of the matter for my career in a suit versus my meteoric rise as a wednesday warrior.

When people like Louise at Mccanns or LW here or Dusty Miller at Leo or Slabbiene work so effing hard it pist me off. I mean if I ever had to interact with them on a delivery.

They seem to create enormous amounts of extra work. The hours tick by. Small problems with content, accuracy or communications are major confidence spoilers towards me. The project plods on to a deliverable with seemingly endless rounds of polishing or slicing-and-dicing or covering ALL the bases, and so on until eventually in the late of eve, a report is printed out for final red ink.

The effort in moving from a report I would be happy wth to these final results seems gargantuine in relation to the output. Why bother? I have always asked myself.

I mean if it takes twice as much work to get 10% better then why not do just 5% better?

Well now the penny drops. To finalise anything to a high quality the work load reaches diminishing returns. Progress becomes disproportionately slow in relation to the work volume and tempo.

To put it simply: when losers are happy to arrive anywhere as long as it is 5pm, winners go the extra mile.

So this monologue has two and a bit conclusions about me, the doubting thomas, the wet blanket, the damp freddie! Why have I done so well in sailing, relatively to the proportion of my life, whereas in business I flounder to be perfectly frank.

1) involvement and personal committment: in sailing I gave it all in racing and off the water. Gymn work, reading metereology, going through rules and cases, learning more about sails and tactics etc. Then putting theory into practice. Plateau-ing a while, then making progress in a quantum leap. Being able to think outside the boat.

The above are lacking in career: I mean I put the hours in but feel a lack of personal involvement and inclusion: I resent being micro managed and having my writing or ideas quashed while bosses plough on with what I see as unnecessary extra work.

2) the team dynamic: because I lose a sense for co-ownership I therefore loose opportunities to own projects. There in lies an irony and maybe the crux of the matter ( pride, stubbornness, "trass") Co-ownership of a race tactics, boat speed, crew coralling and navigation are a given for me: boats which don't allow for this dynamic get dumped by me pretty soon. Although I am frustrated at lack of outright ownership and authority in a race ( owner drivers!) I can live with it because I know the team is moving to a win.

3) going the whole nine yards: on a boat I give it all and then find some: 36 hours drift and vespers and we still wanted to come in goal in the Fædern. 13 hours the year after on mainsheet and I still had something left and a smile as broad as a cheshire cat the next day. Thinking and re-thinking the next wind condition, the tide, the sail setting, the play. Not forgetting the basics: rig tension, tidyness and safety, team morale.


So in sailing I actually have done the thang where you put in more effort to get just a little bit ahead. In HC racing it has often been the case that wins are by a matter of seconds on corrected: so my input and concentration are rewarded.

So the case is in the bigger picture, the boats in the top echelon (where bandit ratings and sailing in your own wind are excluded, or more happily in OOD) are those who put in maybe 100% more effort to get up to the top 10% of placings. The difference between 1st and second place may just be a twitch on the tiller, one bad tack or a slipped sheet while the difference between third and 6th place is maybe twice or three times the overall committment to the sport, and the effort on the day.

The key thing in fact which I am lacking in career is a bit bizarre: the goal, the win. I mean it is so meaningless i relation to life and career in sailing that we set such a price on being first man in on a tour round the fjord? Or is the whole temple of mammon thing also just as worthless?

Failure to set quality goals in work and related career targets, and furthermore a lack of placing any personal value on promotions (other than retrospective frustration!) have been the bigger issue which is then exacerbate by the poor team dynamic I instill: the lack of co-ownership, the passiveness I show in projects where I only have a portion of control. Previously I have felt that I am not an ass kisser, which is true, but in fact even the most domineering bosses just want to see involvement.

I have been down a little road-to-damascus these last two weeks by swallowing my pride, admitting my weaknesses and learning from a guy who can be a real prick. I feel I have felt the whip and now I'm in the harness I have backed down and stopped champing at the bitt. I am a ruly horse. People at the stables here would ride this horse, and then trust rides with strangers outside the coralle. The horse is happier and the owner is much happier despite the discomfort they both had to go through in breaking-in to "co-ownership" to deliver quality.


In yacht racing I was to begin with, an unruly and slow, clumsy horse. So I felt the crack of the whip, but I hated being a loser and then later on, up-the-curve or down-the-line, hated losing because of poor effort and obvious mistakes. I saw sailing, or winning races in fact, as an interesting and stimulating challenge and not an escape but a world in it's own right. This was at the expense of the real world, mundane and bizarre as it is.