»A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.« For me as a sailor, that’s more than just a great quote. It’s almost a tru­ism. But as the son of a civ­il ser­vant, raised on sta­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty, in a fam­i­ly where per­ma­nent jobs and pre­dictable career paths were seen as the sen­si­ble way to do things, it’s also some­thing I didn’t live by for a long time.

My own career fol­lowed a fair­ly clear course for years. Uni­ver­si­ty. Train­ing. Per­ma­nent posi­tions. Until last year. After com­plet­ing a part-time degree in busi­ness psy­chol­o­gy and leav­ing my pre­vi­ous employ­er, sud­den­ly every­thing was up in the air. Or, to put it more pos­i­tive­ly: sud­den­ly, almost any­thing seemed possible.

But what do you do with that much free­dom when you’re used to mov­ing along safe, famil­iar tracks? Espe­cial­ly when the choic­es you make don’t just affect your own life, but your partner’s too. How do you arrive at a deci­sion in a world where almost any­thing is con­ceiv­able, but not every­thing is actu­al­ly pos­si­ble? It’s not that easy.

There are a few things here that belong together

Which brings me back to the woman we owe the open­ing quote to: Grace Hop­per. Math­e­mati­cian, com­put­er pio­neer, Rear Admi­ral — and some­one who was remark­ably good at ques­tion­ing things oth­er peo­ple sim­ply took for granted.

Anoth­er quote often attrib­uted to her has stayed with me: »The most dam­ag­ing phrase in the lan­guage is: ›It’s always been done that way.‹« The more I read about her, the more she fas­ci­nat­ed me. As a com­put­er sci­en­tist, one of her ambi­tions was to make com­put­ers — at the time cryp­tic machines that only spe­cial­ists could real­ly oper­ate — eas­i­er for peo­ple to use. Mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy acces­si­ble. You could write whole books about that.

And the more seri­ous­ly I had to think about my own options, the more I start­ed look­ing at where I had come from. What I can do. What expe­ri­ence, knowl­edge and skills I actu­al­ly bring with me. At some point, it became clear: there are a few things here that belong togeth­er. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Tech­ni­cal exper­tise. Psy­chol­o­gy. Consulting.

I need to go out on my own

And then, think­ing again about Grace Hop­per, I knew: the ship has to leave the har­bour. I need to find out how it han­dles in open water. What hap­pens when the wind catch­es the sails, when the sea gets rougher. I need to go out on my own. And as of yes­ter­day, I have.

Yes­ter­day I offi­cial­ly found­ed Grace, an organ­i­sa­tion­al con­sul­tan­cy focused on change, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and AI. Because I believe change often reveals itself in lan­guage, in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in what hap­pens between peo­ple. That’s where struc­tures can become clear­er, process­es can be test­ed and — bring­ing us back to Grace Hop­per — tech­nol­o­gy can be made gen­uine­ly useful.

For now, the water is still calm, and the ship hasn’t even cleared the har­bour. But beyond it lies the sea. Waters I’ve nev­er sailed before. What the weath­er will be like out there, what oth­er ships I’ll come across, where I’ll make land­fall, which rocks I’ll have to steer around? I don’t know.

But I do know this: it’s my ship. I’ve got the main­sheet in one hand and the tiller in the oth­er. I can keep an eye on the wind indi­ca­tor, read the wind and decide where to sail. The wind may be fick­le. Still, it’s my ship. My jour­ney. Off we go.

Fair winds and fol­low­ing seas.