Why I still bang on about a sinking ship
"Oh God, she's not doing the sinking ship story again, is she?" (eyeroll emoji)
Yes. Yes I am.
To prevent any unnecessary tension, and in case you haven’t heard it before (whaaaaaaaat??), here’s a spoiler alert: nobody died. I'm still here, so we can get that particular worry out of the way early.
It started with a catastrophic flood (anyone else hearing “It started with a kiss” by Hot Chocolate??)
On 16th December 2008 I was serving in HMS Endurance, the Royal Navy's Antarctic ice patrol vessel, when we suffered a catastrophic flood while transiting the Straits of Magellan. A hull valve failure during routine maintenance let seawater pour straight into the engine room. Within about thirty minutes we had roughly a thousand cubic metres of water on board, and with it, a complete loss of propulsion, electrical power, drinking water, and toilets. Everything.
There was no procedure for what we were dealing with. None. Whatever training I'd had was outstripped by what was happening right in front of me.
That's the story. I've been telling versions of it for years now as a keynote speaker, in my TEDx, and I imagine some people are thoroughly sick of it.
This story still works
The reason it keeps being useful is because it's not really a story about a ship, or a flood in fact. It's a story about what happens to people, and to leadership, when we run out of procedures. Because when they run out, what are we left with?
I've used it to talk about risk appetite, about what "acceptable risk" looks like when you're the one who has to decide, live, with people watching your every move. I've used it to talk about decision making under real pressure, not the theoretical kind, and about how you change as a leader the moment things stop going to plan. I've used it to explain why behaviour matters more than procedure once you've really run out of procedure, and how panic, or calm, at the top spreads through a team in seconds.
Of course I could tell you the same thing using a case study from a consultancy project, or a statistic from a client engagement. It would be fine, but it wouldn't deliver the message the way this does. That’s because most rooms full of leaders have never had to make decisions with a thousand cubic metres of seawater rising around them. It's different enough that people stop and listen, rather than mentally filing it under "yes, we know, change management" and switching off. That's exactly what you want from a conference speaker or an offsite keynote, something that cuts through and is a little different rather than confirms what the room already suspects.
Are you booking your next event?
If you're planning a strategy day, leadership offsite, or industry conference for the last quarter of the year, and let's be honest, this time of year is exactly when those conversations start, that's usually what you're looking for. Not another speaker telling your leaders what they already suspect. Something different enough to make a message land in a way it hasn't before.
If you want the fuller lessons I've drawn from it, I've written before about the risk management and decision-making side, and separately about why behaviour beats procedure when leadership gets real. This one's really just an answer to the people who roll their eyes when I bring the ship up again. Yes, I know. I'll probably do it again next time too.
If it sounds like the kind of thing your event needs, take a look at the topics I cover on my speaking page. Or if you’d like to talk through what might work for your event, drop me a message.
