Here’s the next installment of “Leading on the Seas”:
While often known just as a flower term, an ox-eye is “A cloud or other weather phenomenon that may be indicative of an upcoming storm or phenomenon that may be indicative of an upcoming storm.” (Wikepedia)
One of the great capacities or abilities of great leaders is being able to look down the road and identify trouble that’s coming early enough to be able to do something about it.
The “Ox-Eye” weather phenomenon would serve as a warning of bad weather coming. A captain and crew would then need to make adjustments so that they didn’t subject their ship or crew to unnecessary danger or overwhelming weather. They could choose to postpone their progress or they could chart out a new direction to circumvent the coming danger.
In extreme cases, these are decisions that save or doom lives and can seal the fate of the entire vessel itself. Not all dangers on the seas give fare warning, but looking at the moments in which they do I wanted to offer a couple reflections on why sometimes we fail to identify the ox-eye and continue leading into dangerous waters.
I see three primary reasons that we as leaders can fail to identify the ox-eye that may present itself in our leadership context:
- Over-focus on their navigation tools and itineraries and sailing plans. One of the great detractors from attentiveness to the future is the compulsion to try to control the present which is facilitated by all of the planning tools. Precision in the short-run wins out over vision in the long-run. I see this with fixation on strategic plans, organizational charts, and other strategic tools. They’re great in context, but they can lead to your ruin if you can’t see anything else.
- Lack of Sight. Captains and crews who just don’t know what to look for can’t identify warning signs. If you aren’t aware of what those signs are or know what to look for then you can fail to see what is coming. For young leaders this maybe is developmental and focused on growing awareness. The older you’re in the game this begins to just look like incompetence.
- Pride. Captains and crews who identify the Ox-Eye, but reject wisdom in favor of macho or vanity inspired leadership decisions. Weather it’s driven by the quest for glory, image management, or just sheer achievement, reckless choices in the face of warning signs will doom your leadership, your crew, and your vessel.
There are seasons where you have smooth sailing. Then there are seasons where you may find yourself in a serious storm. But there’s a season in which there are clues and warning signs about impending danger in which there is a small window in which you can do something about it. Good Captains can lead in those moments, but identifying the danger properly is the key to knowing what would be the proper course of action.
What helps you identify “Ox-Eye” patterns that signal potential danger and threats to your leadership context?
How to you guard against those barriers or temptations that hinder our capacity to see the “Ox-Eye?”
