John Huth is an avid sea kayaker. He got lost one morning when a
sudden fog arose off Cape Cod. He feared for his life, but he did not panic. John used his seafaring and intuitive navigation skills to find his way to the
shore and not drift out to sea. "The fog actually heightened my
senses," he recently told a SEA Education Association audience.
The same circumstances arose the next morning, but two
young women kayaking without John's skills were lost forever.
The experience coupled with his own guilt and grief led Dr. John
Edward Huth, Donner Professor of Science at Harvard University, to develop his
understanding of cognitive mapping. He asked himself, "How can you
navigate without instruments and in any situation?" His research and findings led to the
2015 book, The Lost Art of Finding Your Way.
Dr. Huth says that individuals can develop their own non-instrument navigation skills. They learn to read environmental clues, from stars, winds and wave types to cloud movements, sand
and snow formations and bird types. They learn to pay closer attention to the
world around them and to react in accordance with this organic intelligence.
Understanding and utilizing these cognitive maps develops the
non-instrument navigator's intuition, which otherwise risks being dulled by GPS,
Google Maps and other modern navigation technologies.
Dr. Huth's work serves as a useful analog for leadership.
How many of us work - really work - at developing our intuitive leadership
skills? How many of us can read faint environmental signals well and
navigate through difficult situations before they become impossible? How many of us can remain focused on "true north" when surrounded the dense fog of organizational life? And how
many of us as leaders know how to find our way when we or the institutions we lead are lost? Not many, I'm afraid.
Photo courtesy of Bio-Pharma.com