Call me Trim Tab. And seek yours.


Are you clear on what a Trimtab is and how you can be one?

The engineer Buckminster Fuller is often cited for his use of trim tabs as a metaphor for leadership and personal empowerment. In the February 1972 issue of Playboy, Fuller said:

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trim Tab.
—Buckminster Fuller
In our efforts to write as ourselves, make an impact on our readers and be effective in business, at the end of the day it is our opportunity to be that “trimtab.”
The first time I ever heard of this small, yet impactful part (be it for airplane or boat) was in 2003. I had met the author of a book on Buckminster Fuller, whose enthusiasm was so real and pure and ongoing (and continues to be.) He knew the philosophy and wisdom of Bucky Fuller like we know our ABCs.
Call me Trimtab.  Try it on for size for yourself if you dare. Imagine you and your writing as being a Trimtab for another.
How do you make yourself a Trimtab? Presuming you are willing, there are a myriad of ways through language and acts of service we can cause the “ripple”  in your readers, your clients, your peers, and those you have yet to meet!
Have you ever read (or overheard) something by someone you didn’t know personally that struck an important chord in you?
What about sharing your best self with intention, with the best hope of being that “little individual” who is at that moment “the trimtab” for the one you know or you don’t.
Apply every best practice you can enthusiastically embrace.
Be real. Be real. Be real.
And know that (or at least I feel) “heart-driven” writing manages to land so elegantly. How can it not?
I so feel like a broken record. And I am okay with it.
Write on…please and with a full heart. Please.

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