Note from Art: Thanks to Jesse Lynn Stoner and Ken Blanchard in their latest edition of, “Full Steam Ahead” for reminding me of the tacking maneuver of sailboats. Stay tuned for my podcast interview with Jesse about this delightful and valuable book in the next few days.

If you’ve ever sailed, you know that the only way to succeed against a headwind is to turn the bow of a boat through the wind and move in a zigzag pattern towards your ultimate destination. This maneuver is called tacking, and it is repeated frequently, requiring constant adjustments and careful monitoring of wind and sail angle to ensure forward progress without wasting precious time and energy.

The Best Leaders Tack Frequently Without Losing Sight of the Destination:

We face dozens of moments every day where instinct tells us to turn straight into the wind and apply brute force to solve problems, resolve squabbles and keep people moving. Sometimes, our instinct is wrong.

Instead of offering a quick solution or mandating an end to squabbling, effective leaders adjust their course by learning to tack. Much like catching the wind at precisely the right angle to fill the sails, effective leaders turn obstacles into energy, motion and progress.

John spent a great deal of time during his first few years as a manager feeling like he was working hard without making forward progress.  He did what he could to accommodate the people and personalities on his team, and he dutifully stepped into problems and provided quick solutions.

It took a new boss…someone who had learned the power of tacking against headwinds to show John that while he was managing issues on a daily basis, he wasn’t truly leading.  John quickly learned that accommodating people simply to keep the peace and stepping in to solve every major problem resulted in momentary compliance but little forward progress.  As John changed his style, he marveled at what a difference it made for him and for his team members, as he helped them discover how to solve their own challenges.

Success Rarely Occurs in a Straight Line:

Too often, we develop our strategies and investment plans with the assumption that once implemented or released, life will be good, customers will line up to give us money and competitors will bow and back away, awestruck at our ability to out-think and out execute them.  Ha!

The reality is that our project flounder, our assumptions often crumble and the paper plans that were so precise and elegant in theory prove brittle and incomplete once they are put into play.  Instead of an unfettered straight line to victory, success, if it comes at all, is only achieved by constant learning based on skillful navigation through crises and chaos.

Elizabeth was charged with responsibility for opening up a new market with a “game-changing” new product.  Unfortunately, the only game that was changed was one that no customers were interested in playing, as measured by initial sales.

Instead of conceding defeat and giving up, Elizabeth and her team went back into the market to find out what had gone wrong.  It turned out that their assumptions on the ease of implementation and the need for on-going support were way off.  The team worked with customers to define a service offering to simplify the start-up phase, and they developed a dedicated support line to help quickly solve customer issues.  As word spread on the value of the new offering and the great support from the firm, sales began to climb.

5 Ideas for Learning to Tack When Your Destination is Straight Into the Wind:

1. Learn to effectively defuse emotionally turbo-charged situations. Emotions create strong headwinds in the workplace. Learn to let people vent and then help them move into the mode of designing their way forward.  This tacking in the face of emotional headwinds helps turn the negative energy into a positive force for forward progress.

2. Resist the urge to provide all of the answers. Remind everyone of the ultimate destination and then teach your team to develop, test and refine the solutions.  Be quick to support learning and slow to criticize efforts.

3. Recognize your own tendency to fight the forces head-on. For example, consider that organizational politics is best handled like fine china…delicately and only when necessary.  I’ve observed otherwise capable people flame out after engaging in one too many extended firefights.  Chances are your political adversaries have something to teach you.  Listen, learn and respond from a position of right and a position of strength.

4. Remind yourself that your customers don’t care about your goals, quotas or targets…they only care about their own priorities and problems. The best way to your destination is by adjusting your course to align with the one your customers want to be on.

5. Quit chasing competitors or you’ll exhaust yourself getting nowhere. By the time you catch up to where they were, they’ll be long gone.  Set your own course..and perhaps they’ll end up trying to chase you.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

We face all sorts of headwinds in our personal and professional lives. If you feel like you are constantly heading into the wind, it’s probably time to adjust your course and put the wind to work for you.  Just don’t lose sight of your final destination.