First-Mover Advantage

A lot of people who have gone to business school or who work in large corporations will be familiar with the term "first-mover advantage." In commerce and marketing, "FMA" is the competitive advantage gained by being the first mover—or pioneer—in a particular market segment. If you stake the first claim, you get the advantages of establishing yourself as the initial market leader.

Gaining FMA requires two things: First you have to see an opportunity. Second, you have to act to seize that opportunity. And so it is with life in general. You can be the sort of person that things happen to, or you can be the sort of person who makes things happen. When you see a life opportunity and move quickly to grasp it, all sorts of good things can happen. The alternative is to spend a life wondering what might have been. It really is essential to gain the self confidence necessary to "do."

Saint-Malo: Arguably The Crêpe Capital Of The World

Brittany is known for its crêpes (thin pancakes stuffed with everything from fruit to meats to chocolate). And St.-Malo may have more crêperies per capita than any other city in France. After a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, we estimate there must be some twenty just inside the city walls. So, where are best crêpes and galettes (buckwheat crêpes) in la Cité corsaire? There would be several contenders. If you want an ample dollop of French charm on the side, you might go with, say, Le Moulin Vert (pictured above). But based solely on the quality of the pancakes, we say it's the Solidor. Located at 7 Esplanade du Commandant Menguy, outside the walls, the crêpes and galettes are not only delicious (some have said the best in Brittany) but very reasonably priced. For example, a ham, cheese, mushroom, and egg galette costs only slightly more than a Coke on the Champs-Elysées in Paris.

La Touline is a close runner up (6 Place de la Poissonnerie). The owner, Pascal, is a great "crêpemeister" and a great guy!

Along The Way: The Saint Helier Central Market

In Saint Helier, the capital of Jersey, you'll find a remarkable indoor farmers' market in the middle of town. For starters, it's enclosed in a striking Victorian cast-iron hall, opened in 1882, that features a large, ornamental fountain in the center. The market offers not only fruits, vegetables, meats, and flowers, but chocolate, wine, baked goods, and a wide variety of gifts.

From the Island's official website:

Here, you will surely be able to find those traditional, if strange-sounding, dietary desires of islanders—des mèrvelles—Jersey Wonders, (small rich cakes); de nièr beurre—Black Butter, (a traditional apple preserve, a legacy of the cider-making industry); and a bag of mixed, dried beans with which to cook pais au fou—beans in the oven, or Bean-Jar—a warming winter dish, in which the essential ingredient is a pig’s trotter, to make the rich gravy. You can still buy the ideal accompaniment —a traditional ‘cabbage loaf’ —bread baked wrapped in cabbage leaves. The dairy provides the products of the famous Jersey cow —milk, cream, butter and yoghourt —or you might like to try the flavours of the delicious ice cream.

There's even a post office and a second-hand book store. If you're not stocking the pantry, you can still sit down and have a bite to eat at one of several cafés and sandwich shops. It's the perfect place to spend a few hours and soak up the local atmosphere. Great fun.

The "Nearest Remoteness" You Can Find!

In all my years sailing around the North and South Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the English Channel, I have found no better cruising waters than the Brittany Coast and the Channel Islands. The breathtaking beauty of the rugged coastlines, the numerous nooks, crannies, inlets and rivers to explore, and the hundreds of small islands that rise out of the sea collectively create a wonderful wilderness. And yet civilisation is never far away.

Saint-Malo with its old city walls, St Helier with its fine wines and fruit and vegetable market, St Peter Port with its seafood restaurants and craft beer are favourite ports of call.

When you add into the mix the charm of historic village lifestyles and the sandy beaches of the nearby islands of Herm, Sark and Alderney, you have a holiday paradise.  The stress of modern life melts away as you sail from island to island with dolphins and seabirds for company.

Across the Channel, only a day’s sail away, lies the south of England. Of course, Dartmouth, Plymouth and Falmouth on the South Devon and Cornwall coasts are all worth a visit. But I particularly like the small fishing ports that dot the coastline: Salcombe, Looe, Polperro, Fowey and Mevagissey, to name but a few.

—Will Sutherland

Unexpected Company

The Channel is full of surprises, including from time to time some unexpected company. Here is a video shot a few years back in our general neighborhood by Chris Caines. It stars some friends—a pod of Bottlenose dolphins—who decided to show up and provide a playful escort. Most people don't know that the Channel around Saint-Malo is home to quite a few dolphins.

Along The Way: Victor Hugo's Hauteville House

When Napoleon III seized power in 1851, the celebrated French author Victor Hugo openly called the new emperor a traitor to France and packed his bags. He relocated first to Brussels and then to Jersey. In 1855, he and his family settled in Guernsey, where they would spend 15 years in exile. There Hugo bought a home, Hauteville House, in St. Peter Port, where he produced several of his best-known works, including Les Miserables and Toilers of the Sea. 

Today, Hauteville House belongs to the city of Paris and houses a Victor Hugo museum as well as quarters for an honorary French consul. The museum and the house's impressive gardens are both open to the public.

When Hugo finally left Guernsey and returned to France in 1870, he was immediately embraced and elected to the National Assembly and the Senate.

The Google Take On Leadership

Alert reader and ELS friend Noel Thompson passed this along: It's a Tom Friedman piece in The New York Times about what Google looks for in their employees. You ought to read the entire thing, but here's an excerpt:

—What we [Google] care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power.”

What else? Humility and ownership. “It’s feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in,” he said, to try to solve any problem — and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others. “Your end goal,” explained Bock, “is what can we do together to problem-solve. I’ve contributed my piece, and then I step back.”

A Bird's-Eye View Of Saint-Malo

We came across a 360˚ aerial view of Saint-Malo on the city's website and thought it was pretty impressive. So we posted it on our Facebook page and thought we should put a link to it here, as well. Enjoy.

Struggling = Understanding

It turns out (SpaceX and Tesla founder) Elon Musk is also a firm believer in "experiential education." In a recent interview he said, "When you struggle with a problem, that's when you understand it." And, in fact, he said that when he interviews job applicants, he'll often ask them how they solved certain problems. If they can't articulate the layers of the process, the details of the struggle, he knows they're lying about their experience—"anyone who's struggled hard with a problem never forgets it." With the struggling comes a thorough understanding. 

Most People Have No Idea...

(c) Fareham Borough Council; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Many people are amazed at all the things there are to see and do in ports along the English Channel—truly remarkable museums, historical sites, and attractions. Here's one that's been in the news recently.

In 1510 Henry VIII ordered the building of an impressive flagship, the Mary Rose, to help defend England against the ever-present threats posed by the Scottish and French navies. In service for 34 years, she sank during an engagement with a French invasion fleet—larger than the Spanish Armada—in 1545. The wreck was discovered in 1971 and carefully raised in 1982. Now in the final stages of conservation, she is taking a place of honor in a stunning new museum in Portsmouth. In addition to the ship, some 19,000 artifacts are on display. There are of course several other historic tall ships to see in Portsmouth, including HMS Warrior and HMS Victory. But the Mary Rose is one of a kind. You'll find an extremely interesting BBC piece here and the official website at www.maryrose.org.

Our Lives Are What We Make Of Them

Photo: Patrick Roberts

Many of the ELS's enthusiastic supporters and generous patrons attended boarding school at Aiglon College, a British international school in Chesières-Villars, Switzerland. The ELS's founder once taught there. Aiglon was established in 1949 by an Englishman named John Corlette, who, while teaching at Gordonstoun in Scotland, met Kurt Hahn and was introduced to his ideas about the importance of challenging students with various demanding experiences. Convinced that Hahn was right, Corlette integrated rigorous hiking and skiing expeditions into his own school's basic curriculum. He also required all students and faculty to gather every morning for a meditation—an inspirational message followed by several minutes of reflection. The following is an excerpt from a meditation he personally delivered:

"... an awful lot of so-called grown-ups, many of whom are really only children with grown-up bodies—an awful lot of these grown-ups spend an awful lot of time complaining about their own lives, how uninteresting their lives are, how they never meet any interesting people, how dull their jobs are, how small their pay is, how silly their [partners] are, how idiotic their children, how unreliable their cars, how tasteless their food.

Well, all this may be true and a lot more, but if they are complaining to other people, and invariably they do, they are complaining to the wrong person. They should be complaining to themselves, for they are themselves to blame.

Our lives are what we make of them, and if they are dull and uninteresting, frustrated, colourless and unsatisfying, it is because we make them so.

[...] it is no good blaming those mysterious people 'they' at whose door we like to lay so many of our misfortunes. It is no good blaming God [...] As Shakespeare says in Julius Caesar, 'the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.'"

He then went on to prescribe three remedies:

1) Accept responsibility for your own life.

2) Spend the time to know yourself.

3) Have the courage and self-confidence to be yourself.

That philosophy is in our DNA. And that is why, year after year, we do what we do.

Leadership, An Evolving Definition

INSEAD, one of France's leading business schools, now has campuses in Singapore and Abu Dhabi, as well as in Paris. Instructive. And it's interesting to read what they have to say about leadership on their web site. Among other things, they assert that it's the ability to lead multicultural teams. In today's world, the skills to motivate and resonate with people from different cultural backgrounds is seen as a non-negotiable requirement for managers and entrepreneurs. In their own words, they want "to provide business leaders with the knowledge and sensitivity to operate anywhere." If you're a student, you should be thinking seriously about moving beyond your own cultural comfort zone. And the sooner the better. Once upon a time, foreign travel was seen as a luxury. Today, in a global economy, it's an important part of an education. If you don't already have plans this summer, we'd love to show you around our amazing neighborhood. We'll provide the transportation.

Chateaubriand

St.-Malo is the birthplace of François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), one of France's most famous writers and historians. If you ever studied French literature, you studied Chateaubriand. In a leadership school blog, it's interesting to take note of an observation attributed to him: 

"As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects that we have never before perceived."

That's really what experiential education is all about. It's about pushing body and mind to the point where, all of a sudden, something true reveals itself and shines a light. And in a sort of chain reaction, that sudden illumination can inform our character and insights for years to come.

January Rumblings in St-Malo

It's the middle of January and the boats are wintering in St-Malo. It's amazing how much work has to be done to prepare for the summer season. There's required maintenance that will need to begin shortly. We're interviewing some new mentors for our three-week leadership courses. Itineraries are being tweaked. We'll shortly be rolling out a new website. And we're busy setting up U.S. marketing and customer support. Importantly, the global Aiglon network has come together to provide substantial help this year. It's all exciting stuff, and we're looking forward to a great season on the water!