Stirrups Into Nails

Something we’ve been thinking about

In 1528, the Narváez expedition was stranded on the Gulf Coast of what is now Florida. Their ships were gone, and their only way out was to build new boats. The task seemed impossible. As Cabeza de Vaca recounted, they “did not know how to build them, nor were there any tools or iron or a forge or oakum or pitch or cordage or, lastly, any of the many things that were needed, nor anyone who knew anything about it to put some expertise into the task. Above all, there was nothing to eat while they were being built.” They agreed to think it over at greater length, and their talk ceased for that day.

The next morning, one man offered to make wooden tubes and deerskin bellows, a small forge to work iron. The proposal was modest, and accepted partly because, as Cabeza de Vaca admits, “anything with some superficial appearance of relief seemed good to us.” They turned to their stirrups, spurs, and crossbows for iron, and began.

How we see it through leadership economics

This is often called the explore/exploit problem: at every moment, you choose between exploring for more information or exploiting the information you already have. In realistic settings, explore versus exploit is a famously hard problem with no clean mathematical solution. There is no formula for when you have learned enough to make the perfect choice.

The Army frequently uses the phrase, “We have a bias for action.” Rather than a bias for “any” action, we see this as encouragement to view actions as ways to see more clearly. Making bellows would teach them what was hard about working iron. Forging the first nail would tell them how much iron they needed. Each step generated the information that the next step required, and the path became visible by being walked.

Patience here is not waiting for inspiration to strike. It is accepting that we cannot see everything at once, and acting on what we can see now. Acting where we already have some influence is how we extend it.

Leadership has this shape. Building trust on a team rarely follows a plan, and learning how to reach a particular person is almost never obvious. You take a few small steps: listening, asking, showing some trust where you can; eventually you have a richer picture of what that person needs.

Seeing our actions as exploring the path frees us from the dichotomy of explore vs. exploit. The patient leader does both.

What we’re sitting with:

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

John Henry Newman, “Lead, Kindly Light”