A couple months ago, I skippered a 37-foot sailboat for a week of island hopping in the San Juan Islands. As a relatively new skipper, I was, shall we say, glued to the chart plotter and the Navionics app on my phone.
Thanks to modern technology, the screens showed me everything I needed to know to navigate the submerged rocks, the sneaky tides and currents, and to efficiently make my way toward the next anchorage.
Upon reflection, I realized that my dependence on the technology wasn’t just helping me; it was also numbing me. What surprised me wasn’t what the tech allowed me to do but what it prevented me from noticing.
In other words: Technology informs, but your humanity transforms. For every ounce of energy you invest in technology, invest two ounces into presence, curiosity, conversation, intuition and connection.
That’s the territory. That’s the humanness that clients hire you for. And that’s what will define the future of great advice.
Losing Awareness
In its purest form, sailing is not about pressing buttons and tapping screens; it’s about awareness.
It’s about being in tune with all the signals that Mother Nature emits. The clouds, the water, the wind, the waves, the colors, the birds, the sounds -- they all tell a story waiting to be interpreted by the mariner.
By relying on GPS and the chart plotter in my recent adventure, I essentially outsourced my attention and my thinking. And this isn’t just a sailing problem.
As advisors, if we let technology take top billing and stop thinking about clients' stories, their fears and their real goals, then we become operators of software rather than trusted advisors.
Sure, tools can model a path, but they can't sense when a couple is not on the same page about retirement. That gap is where your human advice earns its 1% fee.
Losing the Signal
In sailing, what happens if your GPS signal goes down and you have to navigate solely by what you see outside the boat?
That's not just hypothetical. It's about recognizing the subtle trade we make when we outsource awareness to automation.
If we take technology to an extreme, we could end up like the three hyper-advanced beings — Sargon, Thalassa and Henoch — from the original "Star Trek" TV series. These characters evolved so far beyond the bodily world that they existed only as pure intellect wrapped in glowing orbs. They gained infinite knowledge but lost the fullness of being alive.
Likewise, every time we press a button, flip a switch or tilt our head toward a screen, we give up a piece of our humanity.
Losing Our Humanity
Fortunately, technology versus humanity is not a binary choice. It’s a “yes and ..."
With that in mind, I recently flew nearly 3,000 miles to spend four days learning natural and celestial navigation with John Kretschmer, the legendary sailor. What transpired was learning how to have a conversation with the natural world using a sextant, compass, pencil and plotting paper, a nautical almanac and sight reduction tables.
Beyond the math, it was a reorienting of how to think about navigation in an age when our phone can tell us where we are to within 10 feet or less.
What I’ve come to greatly appreciate, particularly since the advent of smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence, is the correlation between the ubiquity of technology and the need to stay true to our innate humanness.
If we let the pendulum swing too far and end up like Sargon, Thalassa and Henoch, we will have lost much more than our human bodies and the delicacy of human touch. We will have lost the ability to think for ourselves.
The Map vs. the Territory
Natural and celestial navigation versus GPS and chart plotters is a metaphor for the larger issue of technology’s role in human society. And while it may be comforting to some to think that technology will solve all of our problems, I think we should remember that “the map is not the territory.”
Coined by Alfred Korzybski, that phrase means that any model, description, belief or representation of reality is not reality itself.
Think of technology as the map, a simplification, an abstraction of the world. It highlights certain features and leaves others out. But the territory — the real world — is infinitely more complex, dynamic and nuanced than any map we can create.
Balancing Technology and Humanness
So, what can be done to strike the right balance between technology and humanness?
Consider these three thoughts:
- What celestial navigation is to sailors, a yellow pad and Excel spreadsheet are to advisors. You don’t need to build every financial plan with old-school technology, but you should know how to do it. The more you know how to put the pieces together, the more effectively you can use the technology that does those steps for you.
- While technology removes friction, don’t let it remove your awareness. Imagine trying to balance on one foot with your eyes closed. The moment you stop feeling for adjustments, boom, you tip. Likewise, if you stop questioning, interpreting and validating what your software tells you, the smallest error can knock a financial plan off course.
- Your job isn’t to process information; it’s to be the human interpreter of your client’s uncertain world. In navigation, GPS gives you a fix. But it takes a navigator to interpret wind, waves, currents and changing conditions. And advisors help clients gain orientation around where they are, where they are going and what matters most now and in the future.
And yes, orientation is a human act.
Steve Sanduski is an executive business coach, author and host of the "Between Now and Success" podcast.
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