Sailing lessons

Editor's Note: This column was included in the May 14 Pulse enewsletter.The passing of Ted Turner got me thinking back to the 1970s, when the media titan was a serious sailor and he won the America’s Cup. I was in high school then, spending as much time as I could on a sailboat during my summers. Like many Americans at the time, I was dazzled by the captain and crew who sailed the Courageous to victory in 1977 off the waters of Rhode Island. .My father, who taught me to sail, was much more impressed a couple years later by another sailor, a guy named Gerry Spiess, who in 1979 sailed his homemade 10-foot “Yankee Girl” sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean. Dad and I met the man from White Bear Lake at the Boat Show in the Minneapolis convention center, and Spiess told us he only wanted to sail in a boat he could handle on his own. “If your mast falls over on a big boat in the middle of the ocean and you are all alone out there, you are in trouble,” Spiess said. “On a smaller boat, one person can handle almost anything.”Spiess’ advice stuck with me, on the water and on the job. In businesses, it’s easy to get in over your head. Ambition often exceeds capability — not a good thing in the office or on the water. Sometimes, even when you know the lesson, it’s hard to follow it.My dad used to say: “Sometimes when you are at point A and you want to get to point B, you have to go toward point C for a while.” You can’t sail directly into the wind, but you can journey upwind if you are willing to take a zig-zag path. Dad was talking about sailing, but I have always thought of that counsel as good advice for life. How many times do we want to go straight for the prize? How tempting is it to go on a sales call without doing the appropriate research first? Or maybe you have an idea for a new product at your bank; wouldn’t you love to implement it without checking with compliance? Rarely, is the path to success a straight line.There is nothing like the wind and water to rejuvenate a fatigued participant in the game of life. Whether your arena is a bank or a media company, a sailor’s lessons can help you get where you want to go.