The Current Doesn't Disappear. It's Still There.
- Mar 15
- 2 min read
The salmon swims hundreds of kilometers upstream - without eating, while its body is already paying the price - and throughout the entire journey it knows exactly where it's going.
But what fascinates scientists is not its endurance. It's the navigation.
The salmon doesn't fight the current. It swims upstream. It reads the current. It uses scents imprinted during its early life, magnetic fields, water temperature - to stay on course. The current itself becomes a compass, telling it exactly where it is.
Swimming upstream doesn’t look like swimming against the current. In the first, you know where you want to go. In the second, you’re simply resisting.
There's something precise about this image for the people I work with.
The executives, founders, and leaders I meet don't need someone to tell them where to go.
They already know or at least think they know. They've chosen. They're swimming.
But the current hasn't disappeared.
It's still there. It changes shape. Sometimes it comes from a direction nobody expected.
Not from the competition. Not from the market.
The current can surprise you from inside the organization itself. From within the partnership.
Not from the outside, but from the quiet pressure that accumulates within.
The people I work with feel this. They know what it means to hit walls while trying to drive change, to break through processes, to lead toward a destination others sometimes can't yet see. Sometimes, despite their position and despite their experience, they discover just how little control they actually have.
That's not failure. That's part of the journey upstream.
What keeps them on course in those moments is not talent - that's certainly there. It's persistence. The plan. The framework that allows them to think clearly even when the pressure is at its peak. And in my experience, no less important: the willingness to share during the hard moments, not to carry everything alone.
The question that arrives in those moments is not "where am I going?"
It's "am I still on the path I chose?"
The salmon doesn't choose a new destination at every waterfall. But it constantly recalibrates its navigation. Reads the water. Adjusts the course. Keeps going.
