A key measure of sailing performance is the degree to which you can sail into the wind—sail to windward. Similarly, a key measure of leadership performance is the degree to which you can keep your organization aroused to challenge and lead organizational change—to sail your organization into the prevailing winds, often on political seas.
In fact, competitive sailors talk about "life at 30°," the reference being to the angle when tacking into the wind. Whether you're leading a company or a team within a company, in order to prosper, organizations of every size, kind, position in the hierarchy, or role in the supply chain, must also learn to operate at 30°, else they are destined for irrelevance. Irrelevant companies go out of business; irrelevant teams within a company are eliminated or outsourced.
It is a fact that without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. As Thomas Kuhn observed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, every significant break through is actually a "break with" conventional thinking. In any organization, all significant progress—the necessary "break with"—depends on windward leadership.
You may be an executive at a firm needing to change its course. You may be a middle or first line manager simply trying to improve the performance of your team. Or you may be a project manager dealing with the subtle kind of cultural change that is inherent in every project. Windward Leadership teaches leaders and leadership teams, at all levels, time-tested theories and practical methods to live organizational life at 30°.
Windward Leadership means leading break through organizational performance.
Non impediti vulgatum cogitationis | Ducatus applico ventus
Unencumbered by conventional thinking | Windward Leadership
