Early voyagers set off the explore the seas without a map. All they had was a compass and the North Star to guide them on their arduous and dangerous journeys, but more often than not, this was enough to keep them on track and help them discover many new lands (and riches) along the way.
This metaphor applies to life and business too! It’s ok if you don’t know the immediate way forward or the immediate plan. As long as you have a clear ‘true north’ or a goal or a mission. Just keep progressing in the direction of ‘true north’ and the map will keep becoming clearer and higher-res.
Two examples from the business world to illustrate this:
1) Google should not exist today. Google was not the first search engine; there were more than eight search giants before Google (Lycos, Yahoo, AltaVista, AskJeeves anyone?). But when others were bombarding users with banner ads, focused on generating revenue from eyeballs, Google stuck to its ‘true north’ of delivering the *best search experience* for its users. The squeaky clean white homepage, the micro-second results load time, the Adrank based revenue model that incentivised ‘good quality’ ads, the ‘skippable’ ads on YouTube; all were decisions driven by the ‘compass’ of user delight.
2) YouTube’s ‘true north’ of watchtime: In Susan’s early days as CEO, the company was still chasing viewcount as the primary metric. That meant that short format videos always won, user engagement was fleeting, and the ‘quality of content’ on YT compared to TV was abysmal (it was mainly cat videos). The team realised that if they had to compete with TV, the ‘true north’ must be *watchtime*. The ‘compass’ pointed to quality of content and engagement as the primary drivers of time spent on watching video, and in just a few years after this realignment, YT hit a mind-boggling 1-billion watch-hours a day!
Whenever the map is unclear, this approach of making progress towards ‘true north’ will also help you keep momentum.
👉 Keep your and your team’s eyes on the ‘true north’. The map will emerge.
p.s. if you want to learn more about this, listen to the excellent ‘Masters of Scale’ podcast episode with Reid Hoffman and Susan Wojcicki.