Dennis Mansell

Watching the development of yacht sailing teams during a campaign, I have always been struck by the similarities between an effective team on a boat and an effective Scrum team. If we take an X-35 team, it has 7 to 9 members.  Each member of the team has a very specific set of skills and a role. A team has a build-up to a race or a series of races in a campaign.  Usually there is a main goal - a certain race that stands out like a world cup - combined with a series of smaller events. Roles To get an idea of a typical modern sailing team, it is handy to understand what everyone does.  Beginning at the back of the boat:

Roughly translated as ‘every country has the government it deserves’ - I am getting used to the idea that this may be truer than even Joseph de Maistre may have meant. I don’t just mean that all our politicians are power-hungry narcissists (something I might not deny), but I mean that humans have, throughout the ages, had leaders that have been created by their followers.  The leaders that floated up, simply had properties that made them buoyant in the social climate that they were in. Usually this quote is used to complain about the corrupt nature of democracy, but that is actually not what I mean.  I mean it more as an emergent property of the masses, that leaders emerge simply because of certain properties (or perhaps lack thereof like ‘ Captain Me ’). Perhaps this clip by ‘CrazyRussianHacker’ can explain what I mean.