As any of my colleagues will attest I love metaphors.
Lately we have been thinking a lot about being under full sail in our business and the best way to serve the needs of our clients. I was in a great training last week and one of the presenters was talking about the need for ballast in achieving goals. She reminded us that great sailing ships would never have made it across the oceans had they not had solid ballast to offset their sails. The weight of the ballast provides a counterbalance to the force of the wind in the sails and keeps the ship on track.
So we started thinking – what is our ballast? What keeps us balanced and moving in the right direction? Our mission, our business plan, our products? In order to truly sail freely and well, we need to make sure our ballast is distributed so that our sails can catch the prevailing “winds” of opportunity blowing our way. Is our mission evident in all that we do? Do we reflect our values and beliefs in our approach? Are our products representative of our standards?
Does your company have the ballast it needs to accomplish its goals?