The vomiting and screaming are over …

The Well HQ are in the review room.
Edited by Baz Moffat.

I was a Team GB rower until a couple of years ago. Just a couple, mind. Four maybe.

And after every single race came a ritual. Once vomiting, screaming and rehydration were done, we headed to the review room for the appraisal. The analysis. The debrief.

We did it every time. We’d gather together to pour over the race that was to assess where we bossed it, fudged it and everything in-between. It was necessary learning in the name of growth, improvement, development, evolution …

The closest the business world has might be the case study. When significant pieces of work end, companies review what went down. Some do it to learn, others to flex …

Which have we been?

Honest appraisal.

In the spirit of searching self-honesty, we’ve been flexers. In fact this very newsletter was, until we changed things last month, a designated platform for us to publish the ROIs, the engagement, the metrics, the wins … and it was all a play for new business.

Self-searching – not so much, but the approach wasn’t cynicism so much as survival. See, The Well HQ has only ever known survival mode. We’ve lived close to the edge for all four of our years and case studies reflected our posture. Our precariousness.

It is what it was. Now, into 2025, TWHQ have just a bit of breathing room. This is new. But the gifts of time and space (and a cash buffer, not gonna lie) utterly compel us, now, to take our whole business into the review room. It’s overdue.

In a sense we’ve come to the end of race #1. The vomiting and screaming are over and it’s time to appraise. It’s time to reflect and look ahead. And this major business excavation will produce insights on which we will build our 2025 and beyond.

Rowing’s Three Absolutes

(™️ Baz Moffat?)

I’m on a roll with rowing metaphors, ish. And it struck me that optimising a business is tightly comparable to assembling and maintaining a world-class rowing team. With that, rowing’s Three Absolutes come into focus. One at a time then …

1. All team members lead

When a coach assembled a cohort of talented rowers the next move was to understand each individual’s assets. Some had strength, others stamina, others smarts. Some had cat-like reflexes, others reliability, or punctuality, or maturity.

Individual assets were then turned into leadership territories. Everyone led in one realm. Everyone was given autonomy and ownership. And with an unflinching backbone of support, empowerment equals stakes equals unity. It won medals.

2. Unity unilaterally

The best rowing teams I’ve been on genuinely built each other up. This wasn’t by accident but design. Too often, high performers are ostracised via gossip and envy; as politics and toxicity come into play. This is a formula for failure.

A sophisticated team knows that when one wins, all win. Just as every PB boosts the team, all negativity drains the team; hence it is imperative to appreciate individual performances in the context of the whole. In rowing this dynamic won medals.

3. Process is queen

I have certain financial ambitions for The Well HQ, but we won’t get there without process. The market in which The Well HQ operate is evolving at speed and only a world-class process can ensure we keep pace with the pack.

In rowing we’d have, say, four x 500m stretches. On the water, team members would do their thing until an overarching instruction became paramount to all else.

Power 10 or Legs 10 or Drive 10 – all aboard would know instinctively what that meant and a hardcoded, instant-action process kicked in. Cue medals.

This is the difficult second race

Experience, okay experience in a boat, showed me that with some Absolutes in place the results took care of themselves. I reckon it’s the same in business.

It strikes me that high-performance teams work together, stay together and excel together when there’s empowerment, unity and process. Embedding those facets won’t happen by accident but via thought, time and resource. A couple of cliches say that what got us here won’t get us there. We cannot rest on our laurels.

Some accuse The Well HQ of leading and defining the space we’re in. There may be truth to that, but we’re not arrogant enough to believe we’ve arrived.

We have breathing room. That’s a gift. But no one has permanent residence on the vanguard of progress. Like everyone else we’re only renting space. The mandate is to look inwards. It’s to change or drift. We have to find a new gear or get out of the boat.