Coaching from Columbus: Learning from the Mistakes of the Great Navigator

[jisansorkar12]

Christopher Columbus - an entrepreneur, an adventurer or a madman? There is an opinion that a normal person would not engage in business. Especially such when everything is unpredictable, little depends on you and you move at random along an untrodden path.

In such a situation, the fact often differs from the plan. This was exactly the case with Columbus: three out of four expeditions failed, and even the land he discovered was named after another navigator. Of course, Columbus did not have modern planning and management tools in his arsenal - they could have helped.

The article will be useful for those who like to learn from the mistakes of their ukraine whatsapp list predecessors or, on the contrary, repeat their successes. Let's see why Columbus's project did not lead to the result that was expected from it, and what lessons we can learn from this story for ourselves.

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Let's return to the story of Columbus.

Startup funding
The plan: quick money from one of the European monarchs who had access to Columbus.

Fact: seven years of knocking on the doors of kings and their advisers in Spain, Portugal and England.

Why is that?

Columbus's idea was simple but unproven: there is an eastern route to India, by land. It is long, difficult and dangerous. But if the Earth is a sphere, then it is possible to get to India through the west, by sea. All that remains is to find this route, and first - money for the expedition.

Back then, these were high-risk investments. Guarantees of multiple returns? None. The probability that the ship would return with an empty hold or not return at all? High. That's why expeditions were not thrown away, even though the potential "output" could be fabulous.

Moreover, the timing was bad. Spain was spending its treasury on a war with the remnants of the Moorish state in Grenada, and Columbus was counting on the Spanish crown above all else. In the end, the rulers of Spain allocated the money, but only after seven years of endless fundraising.

Both European monarchs of the 15th century and modern company managers think in numbers. They need a clear and detailed business plan with deadlines and other details that affect the implementation of the project. Remember this if you want to agree on the budget of a new project or offer a customer a bright PR campaign.

A small digression. Perhaps the most visual tool for planning is the Gantt chart. Moreover, it is suitable for projects of any scale: from short but multi-stage tasks to long production orders. For example, in this article we talked about how the Gantt chart works using the example of making borscht. I must say, it turned out delicious. And here is how Columbus' ambitious project could have looked on the Gantt chart, if it had been at his disposal: