Anyone who leads something is a captain. A project, a team, a product, a company.
I have been getting used to leading teams for years. Understanding the role. Learning it.
I spent 25 years as a freelancer, my own boss. The shift into leadership is therefore quite painful. It is also a lot of fun, and a chance to learn a great deal.
For those of us who are self-taught, metaphors help. Sometimes we have to bend them a little.
Take a ship’s captain. The captain sets the course. They need to know every crew member, strengths and weaknesses. Raise money for the voyage, earn some along the way, and finish in the black. They need to know the technical state of the ship. And so on… Boring. None of this will be news to you.
The captain is trying hard to understand the whole thing. Trouble is, he is short-sighted.
A short-sighted and disoriented captain
I think it is more interesting to look at a beginning captain as severely short-sighted and disoriented.
At the start the captain does not even know they have a ship. They only know they are steering something.
Then they realise they are steering a ship — but they do not know how the ship actually sails.
At first the captain cannot see that the blue around them is the sea. And that the sea holds hazards. It also holds places where the ship will pass more easily.
In time the captain sees a lot — but not that the ship has larger holes, and smaller ones. Someone sees the larger holes and tells them, if the captain has set things up that way.
The smaller holes often nobody sees, and a short-sighted captain has to be able to find them. Otherwise the ship slowly goes under.
Can anyone teach a captain this?
We could keep going. For a captain to set a course effectively, they have to know what they are actually leading.
And here is the key. All of the above, someone can show a captain. Another captain, or a school for captains. The question is how well that education works when every ship, every crew, and every sea works a little differently. Better if the captain learns fast from what is happening on their own ship.
It is a painful process. But I believe it leads to a captain who stays short-sighted — and also curious and cautious.
I enjoy learning to find the holes, not to trip, and not to fall off the ship.