The Persistent Pragmatic: The Science of Sailing and Product Management Part I — A Flat Boat is a Fast Boat

The autumn sail racing season is upon us and it is time to don our BR1 suits and lee ho in the pouring rain. I published an article last year on the many things product managers can learn from racing sail boats and our first race of the season inspired me to revisit these words of wisdom and share them again in more manageable chunks.

This is the first of a six part series so look out for part two next week!

Hello and welcome to the Persistent Pragmatic. Where we discuss all things product management, product marketing, and the pragmatic marketing framework. And sailing. Apparently.

It isn’t as difficult to wind up on a sail boat as you might think.

I saw a sign put up in our local pub. It said “Join us for RYA Push the Boat Out Day”

It was our local boat club advertising an open day for people in the community to come down to the club, see what sailing is all about, and go out on a sailboat on the Thames with one of the members.

So we went.

And we were hooked.

The club had races twice a week and it so happened that the skipper we went out with that first day loved to race and lacked crew.

We didn’t need to be press ganged if it meant going sailing.

I’ve been on several boats with several skippers since and we finally took the plunge and got ourselves a derelict 20 footer. We are still learning to sail on our own but love going out on other boats to race.

Racing a sailboat is MUCH different than just going out for a sail and I have learned many lessons watching my skippers and crewmates that have helped me grow both as a product manager and a head of products.

A flat boat is a fast boat

Sailboats are all about physics and aero and liquid dynamics. But don’t worry, it’s pretty easy even if it is science. The closer you sail into the wind without being dead on the wind the faster you will go, and keeping the boat between 20–30 degrees off the perpendicular (known as heeling) the faster you will go.

The wind speed and the angle of your boat are closely related. Too much wind and you will find yourself at 60 degrees, which is a very uncomfortable place to be, or even worse.

There are a few things you can do about this.

Number 1: Put a Reef in You Idiot!

I had a skipper who did not believe in reefing. This is the act of reducing the size of your sails so that the wind doesn’t push you over (and yes too much wind can be as bad as too little when sailing). No matter how high the wind was for a race he refused to reef. And we usually didn’t do very well in those situations. Not only because our angle in the water and the angle at which the wind passed over our too big sails slowed us down, but because sailing like that is kinda dangerous. There was crash gybing and all sorts which sound exciting when you hear about it but is not very much fun.

The best time to put a reef in? Before you start. It is much easier to faff around with sheets and sails when you are not trying to win a race or keep your sails out of the water when a 40 mile per hour gust takes you by surprise.

Product managers, what does your market look like? Are you putting in the time before the start of the race to market to make sure forces are not going to blow you over or slow you down? Have you assessed conditions and assets, both internal and external, to make sure you are properly structured to realise your strategy? Does your team know what your strategy is?

And are you geared up to deliver? Putting a product out there that isn’t ready to scale is like hoisting those sails without a reef in them in high winds. You might have the best selling idea in the world but if you don’t have the ability to deliver to the market size you are targeting, it is not going to succeed.

Are you struggling to scale or maybe you are not sure if you are ready to scale? I can help you assess your operational readiness so you can be confident your product is ready to take to the high seas. Get in touch with me on the old linked in. I have 18 years of experience in product management, ownership, and product team building.

Number 2: Weight Up

The other thing you can do to keep your boat flat and fast is weight up. I know eh? More weight makes you faster? It does if you put it in the right place. My role in the first year being out in races was ballast. I wasn’t experienced or fast or strong enough to winch or skirt the genoa or handle the main sheet. So all I did for three or four hours at a time was scoot from one side of the deck to the other to put my weight in the right place to keep the boat at the right angle. And not just me, it was often two or three or four of us depending on conditions.

You wouldn’t think that 65kg (ok 75 if you count all my waterproofs) would make a difference but it does. At least I never had a skipper who didn’t thank me for my role in the race even when all I did was sit there helping to keep the boat flat.

Product managers take heed: You need to focus your efforts to make your delivery engine fast. You need to put the weight in the right place at the right time and have a team who knows what the right time and place is. If you communicate your strategy effectively you will be able to trust your team to call out gusts and lulls and make the right moves to keep your boat at the right angle. You need all the help you can get. You rely on all sorts of people with all sorts of skills from all levels of your business to succeed. Help them to get you to your goal with good and transparent communication.

Having trouble understanding where you need to put your weight? An assessment by a neutral Pragmatic practitioner, like me, can help you discover a better strategy for your product by targeting the product management activities most important for your strategy.

Number 3: Trust in the Skills of Your Crew

Product management is more about understanding what needs to be done and finding the right people to do it, than doing everything yourself.

Skippers, like product managers, need to know how boats work and how to make them safe and what needs to be done to get to the finish line. But they don’t do everything themselves. A good skipper has a good crew and each member has a speciality. One will navigate, another will handle the main sheet, yet another might do nothing but get the spinnaker up and down.

The skipper steers and knows what needs to be done and relies on his specialists to help him get there. He can say when to tack but he doesn’t waste his time telling his crew how to do their jobs during a race.

Those specialists know that a flat boat is a fast boat and they all work together to keep her heeling at the right angle and in the right direction.

The Take Away

Sailing is the best sport in the world (fight me) and don’t ever pass up the opportunity to harness the power of nature to take you places.

The forces in project management are a little bit less dramatic but if you keep a weather eye out and trust your crew, they can take your product to amazing place.

And of course sailing, just like product management, doesn’t get any easier. You just get better at it.

(FYI if you have already seen this article over on linked in, I apologise. Been trying a little experiment in which is the best platform for publishing. Results so far: when published on medium and shared on linked in I get way more engagement than directly publishing on linked in. Which makes no sense Zuckerburg you weird and corporation tax dodging weirdo.)