ROLES AND GOALS

When I was in the Navy we once had an interesting challenge. We were out doing night navigation which means you are going quite fast in a narrow environment without the regular visibility. The captain has special marks you have to follow really strict and it’s a lot of teamwork. Our ship was running router with another ship. Our sister ship had an accident and smashed pretty badly out at sea in the middle of the night. A total chaos erupted and now our skill and training went to trial.
The captain managed direct orders, sailors started to administrate “tubes” thru the ship, the machinist started the pumps, divers went into water to cover the hole and slow down the water. Our ship was right behind and went for assistance A.S.A.P and supported to keep the ship floating.
Afterwards I evaluated what did happen and it was really interesting. We found one guy at his locker packing old cassette tapes and when we asked him what the f--k he was doing he answered “do you know how much time I spent recording these……” he was panicking and completely useless for handling the crisis. We put him to the side and kept working. Altogether we worked like a team and it all went well. The broken sister ship had to go to repair and our ship still had a mission to fulfill so our captain put us back on course.
This is very similar to crisis in companies and groups. There will always evolve different crisis and these personalities always show themselves during the chaos. The guy who starts to do something completely meaningless has to be put out of the way from the people who take initiative and fulfill their missions. If there would have been rats onboard the lame ones in the bottom of the ship doing nothing will probably drown there, the rats that jumps off the ship before fixing the predicament will be swimming alone in the big dark sea. The team who takes responsibility and fight to survive will probably be even stronger afterwards. The captain still floating will get back on his course and reach his goal and the other captain will be put on hold and getting nowhere until the team has fixed the ship and the new goals have been set.