Management and Leadership.?!?
- Brad
- Nov 9, 2025
- 2 min read
About five months ago, REIMAGINED came out of the water for hurricane season. She spent the summer sitting in the yard on some sketchy-looking, homemade stands that somehow did the job.
It was my first time captaining a 53-foot catamaran — 17.5 tons of fibreglass — into a tight little dock to have her hauled out. Let’s say, it was a moment.
As I looked back on last year, I realized my sailing season was a mix of wins and wipeouts. Plenty of lessons. I managed my way through it, but that word — managed — stuck with me.
Manage vs. Lead.
Last year, I knew enough to get by. I could maneuver, moor, anchor, and keep the core systems alive. From the outside, it looked solid. The boat crossed the Atlantic, raced around the Caribbean, and ended up safely on the hard.
That’s management.
But leadership? That’s something different.
Management is about knowing just enough to keep things steady — no disasters, no big screw-ups, keep it moving forward.
Leadership is about knowing the domain so deeply that you can see what others don’t. You connect dots that create direction. You build a strategy, not just follow it.
Sometimes one person can do both. Most of the time, they can’t. Great leaders often lack the discipline to grind out the day-to-day. Great managers often lack the perspective to see what’s shifting around them — they’re late to the party.
More often than not, managers err on the side of thinking they are leaders, which is a dangerous assumption — something I’ve seen repeatedly and continue to see. And honestly, the world needs more managers than leaders.
As I head into Sailing REIMAGINED: Season 2, I’m aiming to be both — to manage the journey while deepening my knowledge enough to maybe lead myself somewhere new. Try some things I didn’t expect.
We’ll see how it goes.
Pic and video from the May 2025 haul-out below
