What People Navigate By

True North

The lighthouse doesn’t move. It stays exactly where it is so that others can find their way, and that permanence is precisely what makes it useful.

The gannets circle, land, and lift again, always in motion, but always in relation to something fixed. When the weather turns, that fixed point matters most.

Organisations work the same way. When conditions shift and uncertainty rises, people don’t want reactive leadership. They need a leader whose position remains consistent while everything else moves.

The manager who constantly shifts priorities will find a team that stops committing. The manager has become a weather vane rather than a lighthouse: their position determined by whoever spoke to them last, their team unable to predict where they stand from one week to the next. In uncertain weather, that inconsistency is more disorienting than the uncertainty itself.

The most effective leaders in those moments are often not the most vocal ones. They are the ones whose position on what matters doesn’t shift with the prevailing wind, whose team always knows where true north is, and who understand that holding steady while pressure builds around them is not passivity. It is the most active and deliberate thing a leader can do.

When did you last ask whether the people around you know what they are navigating by?

David R. Smith