What we don’t talk about while racing

The staff at Scuttlebutt HQ are big baseball fans, and it is often during a game when a fly ball is hit between two outfielders. As the players converge, communication is key, but since they are men, we worry. This report by Kim Couranz discusses communication for SpinSheet:

By the time we got out of grade school, most of us heard the parable of the elephant: Several people who cannot see encounter an elephant, and to learn what it is, they touch it. But they touch different parts and have different interpretations of what they encounter:

The one who feels the tail says, “it’s a rope;” the one who touches the trunk says, “it’s a snake;” and the one who touches its leg says, “it’s a tree.” Only when they share this information with each other do they realize that it is an elephant.

And so it is on dinghies and small boats when the crew is larger than just one person. The sum of the perspectives is key to understanding how things are going and to ensure you’re going as quickly and as smartly as possible. Communicating what you see and feel to each other—proactively—is critical. – Full report