Captains and Navigators

This chapter discusses the comparison between a leader and a navigator, implicit in the well-known ‘ship of state’ image, which Plato uses in the Republic. A core component of the navigator model is that the leader helps a country or organization that has opted to take a new direction and that needs someone with a distinctive kind of expertise to get them there. As with the doctor model, the decisions of the leader may often appear unpalatable and, when the going gets tough, the leader also needs to be able to command unity on board. The chapter illustrates the model with two examples: Frederick Douglass, who helped steer America towards the abolition of slavery; and James McGill, who tried to steer AT&T from being a company heavily based around engineering and manufacturing towards a digital future, more reliant on marketing.