Why Your Screen Might Be the Most Dangerous Thing in Your Business
- May 26
- 5 min read
Paul Adamson is a global keynote speaker and leadership strategist who helps organisations navigate change, build resilient teams, and create breakthrough performance. His work blends real-world experience from being a professional sailor and pivoting into the business world.
Let me tell you a story. About twelve years ago, at around three in the morning, somewhere off the coast of Fiji, I made a decision that I believe saved a fleet of yachts from the reef. Not because of technology. Not because of data. But because I chose to look up.
We had been sailing through the night on board Lush, our 90-foot Oyster 885 in the Oyster World Rally, and as we approached Fiji, the coastline was invisible in the dark. The charts we were using, our best available navigation data at the time, were based on surveys carried out in Captain Cook’s era. That was around 250 years ago. Hand-drawn. Lithograph coastlines. Not exactly GPS-grade accuracy.
The smart call was simple, do not go in blind. Do not try to thread a gap in a coral reef, in the dark, on the strength of data you cannot verify. We dropped the sails off the coast and waited for dawn.
When the dawn broke, I spotted it immediately. A transit. Two beacons on the coastline, perfectly aligned. In navigation, a transit is one of the oldest, most reliable tools available. When the two marks line up, you know you are on the right track. When they drift apart, you are off. Simple. Clear. Visible. You just have to look for it.
There was one problem. The electronic chart plotter on board, our modern screen, our data, was placing Lush roughly one and a half miles down the coast from where we actually were. The screen was wrong. Our eyes were right.
I made the call. Trust the transit. Trust what I could see. We started making our way through the gap in the reef, which, for context, was about a hundred feet wide. Lush herself was ninety feet long.
By this point, the rest of the Oyster World Rally fleet had started arriving. One by one, they lined up. Not behind us. Behind each other. Following what they could see on their screens. Heading for a transit that did not exist in reality, heading, in fact, straight toward the reef. I got on the radio. Nothing. Nobody was listening.
We launched the RIB off the bow and sent our engineer racing across to intercept them. When he reached the lead yacht, he was met with the response I have heard in countless boardrooms since, “No, no. You are wrong. We can see it on the screen. The screen is right.” Until the yacht touched the reef.
The lesson that matters for your business
I tell this story often, and every time I do, someone in the room recognises it. Not the reef or the yacht. But the dynamic. The moment where everyone is looking at the screen, trusting the data, and nobody has looked up to check whether it is actually pointing toward the outcome.
That is one of the most common and costly patterns I see in founder-led businesses today.
We are all conditioned to trust the screen. The CRM data. The dashboard. The spreadsheet. The market report. I am not saying the data does not matter, it absolutely does. But data tells you what has happened. It does not always tell you where you are going, or whether the direction you are heading is the right one.
The transit is your outcome. The first question every leader should be able to answer, clearly, specifically, without hesitation, is, "What is the outcome we are actually trying to reach?" Not the activity. Not the metrics. The outcome.
Outcome clarity is the most powerful navigation tool you have
When I work with founders and senior teams, I often find that the problem is not a shortage of data. It is a shortage of outcome clarity. People are busy. Teams are working hard. There is movement everywhere. But nobody has drawn a clear line between that movement and the actual destination.
On a yacht, that gap gets you onto a reef. In a business, it costs you months of effort pointed in the wrong direction. It costs you distributor relationships, market opportunities, and team energy spent on activity that looks productive but is not taking you anywhere meaningful.
The question I ask is always the same, "Is this going to deliver the outcome?" Not “does it feel like progress?” Not “does it look good on the dashboard?” Does it deliver the specific, clear, measurable outcome you have decided matters?
If the honest answer is no, then no matter how convincing the data looks on the screen, you are lining up with the wrong transit.
Sometimes you have to leave the boat
There is another part of this story I want to draw your attention to. When the radio calls did not work, we did not shrug and sail on through the reef ourselves. We launched the RIB. We went to where the problem was. That matters.
One of the patterns I see most often in leadership is the tendency to manage from a distance. To send the message, copy the team, flag it in the meeting, and then assume the job is done. But when the stakes are real and the direction is wrong, sometimes the most important thing a leader can do is go directly to where the problem is. Get off the boat. Get in the RIB. Make contact.
Not to take over. Not to micromanage. But to make sure the message has landed, and to be physically present in the moment that requires clarity.
You are either on your way or in your way
I heard a quote recently that stopped me in my tracks, “You are either on your way or in your way.”
It is short, but it is sharp. Because often, the thing between a founder and a clear outcome is not the market. It is not the team. It is not even the competition. It is the accumulated noise of data, opinion, and distraction that has slowly replaced the original signal.
The transit is still there. The outcome is still clear. But somewhere along the way, we started looking at the screen instead. So here is what I would ask you to sit with this week, "So you know your outcome?"
Not the activities you are doing in pursuit of it. The actual, specific, measurable thing you are heading for. When you look up from the screen and out toward the horizon, is everything you are doing genuinely taking you toward it?
Because the reef does not care how confident you were in your data. It only cares where you were pointing.
Read more from Paul Adamson
Paul Adamson, Trusted Advisor to Founders & Leadership Teams Under Pressure
Paul Adamson is an international keynote speaker and leadership strategist known for helping organisations navigate change, build resilient teams, and unlock high-performance cultures. His journey began at sea, where he skippered a 27,000-mile global circumnavigation before leading the commercial turnaround of Oyster Yachts from administration to a £185M order book. Paul’s work blends high-stakes decision-making with practical leadership tools that drive real-world results. A cancer survivor, he speaks powerfully about resilience, purpose, and optimistic leadership. Today, he works with entrepreneurs, founders, and executive teams worldwide, helping them create breakthroughs that move them from where they are to where they want to be.
