What Colour is Your Boat? How to gain perspective on your business

When I was 18, I sailed across the Atlantic in the Tall Ships Race.

On a 70’ boat, with 16 other people on board, we left Cadiz in Spain and, 4 weeks later, arrived in Bermuda. After mooring the boat, we all stepped out onto the quay, walked a few paces and turned to look back. I’ll always remember the comment by one of my fellow shipmates in this moment, after after spending nearly a month getting intimately familiar with every nook and cranny of this vessel:

“Huh. I’d forgotten it was red.”

Hang on, we’d been living up close and personal with this boat for the last 4 weeks – how on earth could you not have known what colour it was? Surely that’s a pretty fundamental characteristic to have overlooked?

(I'm the person you can see standing on the right)

It’s not about capability, it’s about perspective

From our vantage point on board, we could see every detail of the deck, the rigging and the cabin; but the only way to see the hull would have been to lean right out over the side of the boat and look backwards, Of course, we had no need to do that as we were too busy sailing the boat. Plus, it wouldn’t really have been advisable in the middle of the Atlantic and we couldn’t exactly stop the boat, down anchor and get out – we were in a race.

I expect you can see where I’m going with this...

This is the major difference between what it is like to get a consultant in to look at your business and doing it yourself, or getting your in-house team to do it. It is fundamentally impossible to see what your business looks like from an outsider’s perspective when you’re inside your business. Having worked as an in-house Marketing Manager previously, I know how difficult it is to do this, even when you have the necessary marketing skills and expertise.

What does your business look like from the outside?

I often find myself working with business owners who are struggling to articulate key elements of their business:

• Their vision for their business
• The real value they deliver to their customers
• The position they want to occupy in their market
• What their ideal buyers look like
• The differences between themselves and others in the marketplace

As an outsider, it is so much easier for me to look at a business and say “this is what your business looks like; this is what you are about; this is what makes you special.”

Even consultants need consultancy

I don’t readily admit this, but I often find myself trying in vain to articulate all these things for my own business. And I have to remind myself that having the expertise is not enough – I also need the perspective that I simply cannot get while I am inside my business. I have had to seek advice from others to do for me what I do for my clients. This has been a humbling lesson, as you can imagine!

But for my clients, having both the expertise and the perspective means that I can help them understand their business in a new way and enable them to take clear, strategic action based on what their business looks like from the outside.

Only as an outsider can I look at a business and say, “your boat is red.”

If you'd like to step out of your boat and get some perspective, you might benefit from a strategic sounding board session.  Or drop me a tweet, email or give me a ring with any questions.