Dealing with a Sudden Crisis
Posted By Rob Millard - 0 Comments -
It is late one evening and the USS Palau (not its real name,) a US Navy amphibious helicopter transport, is approaching San Diego Harbour. Suddenly its boilers fail and have to be shut down. This cuts off power to the generators. With its primary steering out of action and almost no electrical power, the ship's inertia continues to drive it headlong towards the ships and the pier in the harbour ....
It is late one evening and the USS Palau (not its real name,) a US Navy amphibious helicopter transport, is approaching San Diego Harbour. Suddenly its boilers fail and have to be shut down. This cuts off power to the generators. With its primary steering out of action and almost no electrical power, the ship's inertia continues to drive it headlong towards the ships and the pier in the harbour ....
This is the opening narrative in a book called "Cognition in the Wild" by University of California at San Diego professor Edwin Hutchins. The book is about cognition and the term "in the wild" refers to the fact that the study was done outside a laboratory. Though not an overly easy read, what drew me to the book was the link between culture (I have a particular interest in correlations between culture and strategy execution) and cognition. The book reveals that on a warship, a very effective culture evolves which has as its core, seamanship and navigation. But, back to the "Palau" ....
Main Control immediately advises the Bridge that they are losing steam pressure. The conning officer takes appropriate action by ordering rudder amidships in case steering should fail, which it does. Almost immediately, Main Control is back on the intercom, more alarmed this time" Bridge, this is Main Control. I'm going to secure number two boiler at this time. Recommend you drop the anchor!" (It is standard procedure on large ships to have an anchor ready to drop in case the ship loses ability to maneuver in restricted waters.)
Nothing in the captain's tone reveals the extent of the crisis as he orders a party forward to be ready to drop anchor. Here and there a muttered curse or anxious face, but that's all, reveals that the gravity of the emergency is not lost on the crew. Within 40 seconds of the first report, all steam pressure is gone. Without steering or electricity, the ship is a dead weight ploughing through the night waters. Drill follows drill as various pieces of critical equipment fail. The Captain hands the con to the navigator. More drills. A manual backup steering that takes several string men to operate slowly takes effect. Within three minutes, auxiliary diesel generators come online and emergency power supplies surge into the ship's vital systems.
Then, incredibly, a civilian sailboat chooses that moment to try to cross the warship's bows. Normally, this would have been met with five short blasts of the ship's horn but this is steam operated so is not functional. A sailor runs down two flights of steps and off to the bow. Halfway there, he realizes he is not going to make it, stops, and sets of five feeble sounding blasts. The sailboat passes in front of the ship and emerges the other side, mercifully unscathed.
Twenty five minutes after the engineering breakdown and more than two miles from the mishap, the ship was brought to anchor. How was disaster averted? The reasons are interesting from the perspective of comparing them to what would likely have happened had the "craft" that had run into problems been a professional service firm rather than a warship.
1)The level of seamanship was exceptional. While this specific incident had not been foreseen and practiced, the entire crew was well versed in thinking independently but within a chain of command, in times of crisis. Hutchins writes: "Many kinds of thinking were required .... Some of them were happening in parallel, some in coordination with others, some inside the heads of individuals, and some quite clearly both inside and outside the heads of the participants." How many firms apply their minds AT ALL to questions like "what would be do if ...... happened?" At the strategic level, which is the domain of this blog, but also at the tactical level especially where the results could be strategic in nature?
2)There was no panic. Everybody that was involved with the problem was focused on it and, presumably, those that were not stayed out of their way. I doubt that anybody was thinking of jumping ship or resigning from the Navy! Voices and actions remained under control.
3)Action followed decision immediately. While this is understandable in the command and control military environment, which is far removed from the culture of most professional service firms, all too often in our firms problems are confronted by committees and inaction, rather than decision and action.
