Learning to ski.

Since child­hood my fam­ily and friends have spent many week­ends and vaca­tions on the water. This has pro­vided me the chance to watch a wide vari­ety of human behav­iors. The boat ramp at the end of a long week­end is a near lim­it­less source of tragic com­edy.
See­ing a young­ster or first timer learn­ing to ski is a com­mon sight. I’ve noticed two pre­dom­i­nant meth­ods of “help­ing” some­one learn to ski. The first is for the skier to be in the water bob­bing at the of the rope. Amidst the fran­tic efforts to sort out the rope and ski’s a cacoph­ony of instruc­tions is shouted by fam­ily and friends from the boat. While much of the instruc­tion is valu­able this method com­monly leaves the skier exas­per­ated. The prob­lem is rarely that the infor­ma­tion is bad. The issue is that there are too many voices at once and that the good is inseper­a­ble from the irrelavent.
A prefer­able approach is for an expe­ri­enced skier to get in the water. Through calm and up close guid­ance the teacher can help the begin­ner assume the cor­rect posi­tion, focus on what’s impor­tant and antic­i­pate. This approach requires a much closer rela­tion­ship between the two and also requires more com­mit­ment from the men­tor (they actu­ally are in the water!)and trust by the stu­dent. Yet, this approach works much bet­ter for both. This is how I was taught. I learned quickly. My father was left float­ing in a cove a few times but it was worth it to him too.
Each year thou­sands of busi­ness books are writ­ten. Many are good, many more are “accu­rate” but bor­ing, some are plainly bad and a few are excep­tional. How can you sep­a­rate all those “voices?” As a busi­ness leader is there some one that is “fresh from bat­tle” that you can rely on? You might have to invest some time and resources to find such a per­son but that is bet­ter than dan­gling at the end of your rope just pray­ing that you can hang on while all the “experts” are yelling at you.

From the lake,

John