We are about to enter the third quarter of the year and this is the time that I ask business owners to look at their numbers, their strategies and to determine what course correcting action needs to take place to finish the year strong. Often it’s simply about applying a modified game plan or simply looking at things with a different lens.
I often ask other business leaders what their techniques are to adjust the course and recently I heard a phrase and analogy that I thought was interesting. It comes from the sailing world and is – Velocity Made Good. Basically it a new way to view what Wayne Gretzky said years ago – “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”
“Velocity Made Good is a term we use in sailing that refers to the velocity of the boat in respect to the true wind, or apparent wind, which is the wind on the water. You overshoot the mark and do not sail directly in a straight line, you have to take the curvature of the earth into consideration in addition to the true wind,” said Elliott Wislar, 2 time world sailing champion and CEO/Founder of Clearbrook LLC.
Sailing in a straight line is not the fastest way to reach a mark. Instead, the boat is turned away from the wind which actually creates more forward pressure on the sails and allows the boat to move faster. It seems like the long way to the finish line, but it is the fastest he said.