The Big Question

Will it make the boat go faster? It’s a common question among rowers, popularized by Ben Hunt-Davis and his teammates in the 2000 Olympic gold medal-winning eight.

It’s the ultimate filter for keeping athletes and coaches alike focused on what actually will improve performance.

Every decision athletes make—from how well they warm up before practice to how they spend their Saturday nights—can be run through this simple test.

Coaches, too, ask themselves this question when considering an adjustment to the practice schedule, equipment purchase, or a lineup.

But what if we applied that same question beyond the boat?

Because asking whether something will make the boat go faster isn’t really about rowing. (In fact, Hunt-Davis’s book by the same name was written for non-rowers and meant to apply to business and life.) It means being clear about your priorities and disciplined in your focus. It’s a way to check whether your actions align with your values and goals. And it presents an opportunity to look at what’s distracting you from what really matters.

Coaches are getting pulled constantly in a hundred directions— meetings, paperwork, equipment, travel logistics, recruiting, mentoring, fundraising. Most of these matters must be dealt with. But not all of them make the boat—or your program, leadership, or career—go faster. By applying this question to our work, we can better separate mere busyness from progress.

The first step is to define your boat. What are your guiding principles? What are you trying to move toward? If your reason for coaching is to develop confident, capable young people ready to take on new challenges, then you need to make sure you’re focused on doing exactly that and not getting distracted testing out the latest bit of technology or fighting with administration.

If your goal is to become a head coach in the next five years, you need to make sure you’re getting as much exposure to high-level responsibilities as possible, not sticking to your familiar, routine tasks.

Once you’ve defined your focus, you need to take an honest look at how you’re spending your time. Where is your energy actually going? How much of that serves your big-picture goals? Think about ways you can spend more of your time and energy on what’s going to make your unique boat faster, and less on things that don’t.

The best leaders I know and work with, in and out of sport, come back time and again to a version of this question. Before taking on a new project, saying yes to another meeting, or adding one more thing to an already overflowing to-do list, they ask if it will make their own boat go faster. Will it allow them to move closer to their goals or live in better accord with their values?

Like any skill, this takes practice. But sustained success comes from having the clarity and focus to put your energy where it contributes to both literal and figurative boat speed—and walking away from anything that doesn’t.

Madeline Davis Tully competed as a lightweight rower at Princeton and on the U-23 national team before coaching at Stanford, Ohio State, Boston University, and the U-23 national team. Now a leadership and executive coach, she is the founder of the Women’s Coaching Conference.

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