Little Current, a beautiful and historic maritime town that serves as the gateway to the Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario, is aptly named. Or perhaps it's inaptly named, because on some days it should be named "Big Current".

The Manitoulin Island is the world's largest fresh water island, and it serves to separate Lake Huron from Georgian Bay. If it wasn't for a small strait on the north part of the island, Georgian Bay would actually be considered a lake, but that's another story. Little Current is a town at the mouth of the strait, named because the strength and direction of the current through it changes with the velocity and direction of the wind, and that can (and usually does) change daily.

Sitting at the town dock, on a windy summer day, 'adventure' is likely to play out every time a skipper unfamiliar to the region tries to bring a boat into port. And so it was today. On this fine August day, the wind was coming in from the east, pushing the water of Georgian Bay back into Lake Huron, creating an unusually strong current through the strait. Watching from the back of my boat (sitting with my laptop trying to figure out what to write my next column on), I saw a large pleasure boat making for the town dock and I knew instantly that the skipper had miscalculated and was in trouble.

And so did everyone else on the dock.

I shut my laptop and jumped to the stern. Other boaters ran to the ends of their docks and we all started waving frantically and shouting instructions to him. He was coming in too fast, and he didn't compensate for the current. It was only a matter of seconds, no more than 10, before he knew he was in trouble too, and 10 or 15 seconds later he was bouncing off of our boats and the ends of the finger docks. There was nothing anyone could do, neither he, nor any of his 'advisors' on the docks. As disaster was happening in slow motion, for all us docked skippers to observe, the commentary was all focused on his ineptitude, incompetence, and poor boatmanship in general. Even when he finally got tied up safely, the event was still being dissected and replayed in everyone's mind, and his reputation as a skipper was thoroughly thrashed.

But then something unexpected happened. The rattled and presumably embarrassed skipper came over to our dock and introduced himself to every boater on the dock, asking if we were all ok and if there was any damage to our boat. He was gracious, thanked us for our attempted assistance, and accepted all responsibility for what went wrong. After a quick survey of boaters, the damage was found to be minimal: one bent prop and some surface scratches well above the water line.

Suddenly the conversation on the dock changed. The focus was no longer on the skipper's ineptitude and poor boatmanship, but instead was now focused on the wind direction and the strong and unpredictable water current. The boaters familiar with the port all commented on how unusually strong the current was at that time, and how they too would have struggled in those conditions. Others chimed in with their own harsh docking condition stories, and before you knew it, the skipper's abilities were no longer in question. It made me think that sometimes in life, and in business, s#it happens; things get out of your control, and there's no way to prevent momentum from causing the inevitable collision to occur.

What is important after that is not the post event analysis by others - which is sure to happen - but instead how you, the leader (the skipper), choose to handle it. In this case, the skipper chose to accept the responsibility for the event, without making any excuses or offering deflecting explanations, and all those affected were instantly motivated to be gracious. No one makes the right decision every time, and no business leader (or skipper) reads all the business conditions accurately either. And then s#it inevitably happens.

The question though is what happens next? Unfortunately the all too common occurrence these days is that blame deferring explanations are offered to save the face of the company or its leadership, when the best thing to do is apologize and accept ownership of what's gone wrong. S#it happens. We all make mistakes. Leadership isn't just what happens before the disaster occurs, it's what happens afterward too.