01
Intro · 1 day Day Tack One-day seminar
A full seminar day on the methodology. Sailing is light and group-specific — lake, half-day, or a day at sea. No sailing experience required; the curriculum leads.
€600 / person
Academy · Programme 04 · Crew of six
When boats teach
what slides can't.
A working week at sea for senior leaders, process owners, and decision-makers. Strategy ashore in the morning. Crew on the lines in the afternoon. Reflection on deck after dinner. We bring the methodology — you bring a real organisational problem and the discipline to sit with it for five days.
JV/SAIL · est. 2026 01 · Why this exists
Process management, only with weather.
Sailing is not a metaphor for leadership — it is leadership, with the slide deck removed. Navigation under uncertainty. Crew coordination without authority cues. Risk assessment with consequences. Reading conditions you didn't pick.
We've spent twenty years building decision-support systems for organisations that get this wrong. We've also been sailing for almost as long. The seminar combines them.
— Not a perk. Not a retreat. A working week.
01
Navigation
Decisions under uncertainty, with incomplete data and an unforgiving deadline. The same shape as every strategic call you make on land — just with consequences you can feel in the rigging.
02
Crew
A six-person crew on a 45-foot boat is the smallest functional org you can run. Roles overlap. Communication is forced to be precise. Hierarchy bends to expertise. Your organisation in microcosm.
03
Weather
Conditions change. The plan from yesterday becomes the wrong plan today. You learn — physically — to update beliefs, hold light, and act anyway. The same muscle every senior decision-maker needs.
02 · Three programmes
Pick your depth.
Three seminar depths — decisions under uncertainty, process and leadership — with sailing as the working environment. Crew capped at six. Led by a long-time skipper and instructor with deep process-management practice. Waters by cohort and season (Mediterranean coastal grounds when it fits; Day Tack may stay local or include a day at sea). Logistics follow the syllabus.
02
Most chosen Process Crew Five-day seminar
Five-day intensive. Each morning one real case from a participant's organisation; afternoons on the water; evenings structured reflection. You leave with a working roadmap and a small, honest peer group.
€5,400 / person
03
Advanced · 10 days Long Passage Passage seminar
Multi-day seminar at sea for senior leaders only. Long watches, genuine fatigue, weather you did not choose. The syllabus runs deeper when the sea has the last word. Coastal and passage grounds by cohort.
€8,900 / person
03 · How a day looks
Mornings ashore. Afternoons aboard. Evenings honest.
07:30 — 12:30
Theory ashore
A short framework, then one participant's real case worked through with the group. We treat the case as a process-management problem with weather attached.
- Decision frameworks
- Risk & weather mapping
- Stakeholder routing
13:30 — 18:30
Applied at sea
A passage with a stated objective and an unstated constraint. The crew works the boat. The morning's case is held in the back of the head. Decisions on deck mirror decisions on the case.
- Watch rotations
- Navigation drills
- Live re-routing
20:00 — late
Reflection on deck
Dinner in harbour. One participant facilitates a structured retrospective on the day's case and the day's sail. We write what we learned. Sleep on it. Repeat.
- Structured retro
- Written takeaways
- Next-day brief
“
By the third afternoon I stopped seeing the sailing and the case as separate. The same instinct I was trying to build with my team — wait for more signal, then commit — was sitting right there in the cockpit.
Anna K. / Operations Lead · Pharma · Corsica week 2025
Six seats. Two seminars a year.
Apply with a paragraph about the case you would bring. We reply within a working day.
↗ Two seminar cohorts a year · dates on request