The Differentship Road Show

Regular sufferers of this column will know that Differentship exists only in my mind and is not real. But as Morpheus says in ‘The Matrix: “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain”.


We at Differentship Shipmanagement will roll out, starting next week, an ambitious programme that will target the best and brightest in schools and colleges in selected cities across the country; these bright youngsters will be encouraged to join us as deck and engineering cadets. We will start at Class XII level now and later go on to make presentations at the beginning of each academic year to Classes X, XI and XII. The schools or colleges we choose will be amongst the top ten in each major city; we will then move on to smaller cities and towns as our fleet expands.



Some things we are (obtusely, to many in the industry) fixated on:

We will be truthful about the pitfalls and benefits of a merchant naval career at every stage; we do not believe in luring people with falsehoods; in any case, we believe that this career has enough going for it to be a worthwhile choice for many.

We always target excellence and so it will be here too. There is no use in large numbers if individual calibre is poor.

One of our Masters or Chief Engineers who are ashore or afloat will make each presentation at each institution. The only other requirement we have is that they will be excellent speakers and they answer any questions after each presentation truthfully and usefully.

We will leave a phone number and email id at every school in case further information on shipping is sought. Additionally, we will, as far as possible, nominate sailing officers on leave and in rotation to respond locally and revisit schools if necessary.

We are keen to amalgamate best practices from the industry into our programme, and, indeed, to help other shipmanagement companies set up similar programmes if they so desire; we strongly believe that making the industry more attractive to the right people is beneficial to us all, and so all of us will complement each other instead of being uselessly adversarial. (In this connection, we are not interested in seeking best poaching practices from others!)


What follows is a draft, almost completed, of our initial address at each educational institution. We now make it public for two reasons: one, we seek feedback from the industry to improve this. Two, we offer this plan to anybody in the industry who feels it may be useful for them, as we believe it will be for us.


Here is the opening address that will be made at each school. (The anecdotal part of the address will obviously vary, depending on the speaker). Brochures will be distributed beforehand. In the backdrop of the hall will be a photographic or video show running, with different ships, crews performing diverse operations, life at sea, ports, a vessel’s interiors in detail, machinery and deck spaces, navigation and the bridge depicted.... I am sure you get the drift. (We may even have the hackneyed photograph of a four striped, blazered and sextant armed Captain shooting the stars on a bridge wing!)

This is what the opening address will essentially say:

“Hello, and welcome to the Differentship road show. We are here not just to sell our company but also to present a career option to you. At the end of this presentation, we will answer any questions you have: in any case, we have given you some brochures and will be leaving literature with you that will tell you more about the modalities of becoming an officer at sea, besides directing you to some very useful websites and other reading material. We will also leave a phone number and email id where you can contact us to get more information later. Our intention is to leave you in a position where you can make an informed choice of career”.

“Ships carry well over 90 percent of all goods on earth, and so there are many kinds of ships. A merchant naval officer is qualified to sail on any of them, subject to additional qualifications that are not huge. His professional training starts after Class 12: the first two and a half years or so is an apprenticeship period ending in examinations, after which he is a certified officer. We have, in the information on modalities on how to become a marine officer in our brouchers given to you already, numbers on initial stipends and officer salaries. These, as you can see, are excellent and in many cases tax free, which means that you can add at least 25 percent to the figures to compare them with wages ashore in India.”

“Life at sea is mentally and physically tough; many of you probably have an idea of this already. You work long and hard hours and are away from your family (though when you return you can be with them for a few months on leave) , you often still don’t have easy access to email on board and phone calls are expensive, although this is changing and is enormously better than the time I went out to sea around your age. These are the major negatives; there are others too, as there are in any profession on earth: here, ship’s officers are being blamed by too many countries for too many things and there are pirate attacks off Somalia that you have read about. These are problems, sure, but not insurmountable ones: for example, Somali attacks have been around since the early 90’s, and I have sailed for more than fifteen years after that, often through those waters without being attacked even once. In fact, I spent, a few years ago, four months on one ship mainly in those waters almost everyday!”

“Now for the positives. For a start, it is an excellent career for people who enjoy thrill and have a lust for adventure. Then, salaries are very good and will probably get better as a major officer shortage is predicted. Keep in mind that not very much money has to been spent on the basic training itself, which is the case in most professional and similarly high paying professions ashore these days. Those of you who do not want to burden your parents with tens of lakhs in fees at those institutions will find the merchant navy particularly attractive. And food, lodging and medical treatment is free when you are working!”

“Then, one is ashore for long periods of time. This makes up, to an extent, for the fact that life on board is strenuous for about six months at a time for an officer. Keep in mind, though, that these ‘contract periods’ are generally becoming shorter anyway, and more so for senior officers. Take my example: I have not sailed for more than four months at a time since 1989, taking almost equal time off!”

“’Join the navy and see the world for free!’, is an apt expression, even though going ashore is not as easy and stay in port is not as long as when I was a Cadet. Even so, you will travel to many interesting places across the world and get time off in many of them. The advantage this gives to you in terms of experience, a broadening of your opinions and the ability to manage different kinds of people and situations is enormous, and will help you tremendously whenever you plan to move to a job ashore. Also, when you get married your families can sail with you!”

“Another advantage: you do not have to be a part of the rat race that so many jobs are ashore. You can pace your working life, taking time off as you want. Even on a daily basis, the nine to five (increasingly eight to eight) grind will not be yours. This has other pluses. As my brother in law told me once in Mumbai: ‘When I go to work my young son is sleeping. When I return he is sleeping. At least you are home when on leave.” That I had the time (and money) to make a two month long road holiday across India soon thereafter is another thing that I could have never done if I were working ashore.

“At sea, as you rise up in rank you will manage more and more complicated and computerised machinery and complex operations, and you will manage them with just a handful of people. In not many civilian occupations are the lives of twenty odd people and millions of dollars worth of enterprise in the hands of a twenty one year old officer or even a thirty year old Captain or Chief Engineer. The sense of achievement this will give you will be huge. To me, this has been one of the biggest pluses; this career pushes you to your limits, rewards you handsomely and gives you the confidence to thrive in the face of any challenge that is thrown at you, at sea or ashore. I have also worked successfully in the IT industry for a couple of years. One boss was impressed enough to remark ‘We should employ all merchant navy people!’”


“As I look back at my time at sea, I can tell you that it was tough work, but I revelled in the challenges. I was away from my family a lot, but I provided decently for them- and they sailed for years with me. I missed many birthdays and anniversaries, but so does an army man or even an executive these days. I was cut off from much of civilisation, but I made up for some of it on long breaks. People had misconceptions that sailing was for dumb people, but I knew better: their mistakes at work would cost money; mine could cost lives. My wages were good; I got sea breeze in my face at work and I was doing something more worthwhile than shuffling paper in some office. I had, overall, a good thing going. So can you.”


“Now, an announcement: Differentship will award full scholarships for Cadets to upto six students from this class. Selection criteria will be tough, but at the end of it, the winners will be required to spend absolutely nothing on their pre sea or post sea training on board our ships; in fact, we will give them, instead, a four hundred dollar stipend every month at sea during training. Their only expenses before they become officers will be college and exam fees leading to their Certificates of Competency; some of this money can be saved from their stipends.”

“My colleagues and I will now answer any questions you may have. Once again, I ask you to consider the merchant navy as a career seriously; it is a good career choice. Discard it if you must, but you owe it to yourself to give it a good thought. Thank you for listening.

 
For regular sufferers of this column who have come this far, an afterthought: If the answers we get when we interrogate the calibre of our officers are substandard, then perhaps we are asking the wrong questions.

When Differentship MET Common Sense, Part One.

(The first of a two article series on the major problems, and some possible solutions, to the present poor quality of Maritime Education and Training- MET- in India)

pic courtesy commonsensedogtraining.com




What are the reasons why watch keeping standards are falling at sea?
It is easy to answer the question instinctively, rattle off the usual reasons, and be close to the truth. Also far enough from it.


Short manned ships leading to overworked and fatigued officers. An explosion of administrative and statutory paperwork. Lower academic competence compared to trainees twenty or thirty years ago. Lower levels of commitment all round. Fallout of fewer entrants seeing shipping as a career and not a stopgap arrangement. Poor training and poorer planning. Truncated pre sea training. Poor on board training. Impractical distance learning programmes. One could go on, and one would be essentially correct. One would be almost right.


Almost, but not quite.


Recent opportunity to look at the training world at closer quarters than I am used to, however, threw up some interesting realities. Meshing this with what I have seen in practice aboard modern ships with multinational crews has made me understand a little better the drivers behind each component in the puzzle. I will begin with Pre Sea training. Even ignoring the much maligned IGNOU course in India, the usual alternative: three months Pre Sea, a year and a half or so at sea plus six months of college before appearing for examinations cannot work well, I feel. It is lopsided and weighted against practical learning and we are promoting feel good degrees at the expense of operational safety and professional efficiency.


I will give my opinion, as usual, on what could be better options to the present quagmire next week; meanwhile, here are the most significant reasons why I think the present system is not producing excellence:


The explosion of unethical training institutes: : Barring notable exceptions, many MET institutes run on the poor business model of profits above all else. And so they make elaborate and unrealistic promises to raw recruits. They degrade their own brand by not investing enough in the future and by employing ad hoc (and quite poorly paid) faculty without much examination of the faculty’s knowledge or ability to deliver quality education. This malaise extends to both pre sea and post sea training courses, as any of us who have suffered the revalidation and upgradation process will testify. I call this a poor business model because excellence is far removed from the reality here, and so is customer (trainee and ship owner) satisfaction. Poor facilities and faculty do not make for good education, whatever tie ups one orchestrates with institutions in India or abroad for marketing purposes.


Poor Shipmanagement company practices: Somewhat akin to shady MET institutes, many shipmanagement companies use training as a cash cow while flushing quality down the drain. Billing shipowners exorbitantly for ‘company sponsored courses’ may be fine. Conducting those courses poorly, cheaply, with poor faculty and in a hurried and ill conceived fashion (often clubbing them with joining ship formalities to the detriment of training) is not. The clear message sent out to everybody is that this is not a serious exercise. It is just another brick in the wall.


Lack of long term commitment from the trainees: Recently, a straw poll I took of a fresh faced pre sea class suggested that a third of them were planning to quit sailing within a decade: this when they had not even stepped on board a ship yet! In addition, less than a third saw themselves sailing for most of their professional lives. Where, then, is the motivation? Where do you think these recruits will spend energy in the near future: in increasing professional competence or in dreaming about how to find a way out of what is an occupation but not a profession?


Lack of committed trainers ashore:After navigating at sea for a few decades, I find that, as an educator, I have to spend considerable time preparing to take basic navigation classes. Simply put, some of my principles are rusty. An easy way out would be to stick to the course material; the problem with that, of course, is that teaching poorly or in a blinkered fashion results in students being, well, poorly trained. Another challenge is that the navigational syllabus for a three month pre sea navigational course (remember that this is just one subject amongst many that trainees are taught) has to be particularly well compiled and executed. Basic mathematical concepts and navigational skills cannot be compressed or taught willy nilly. I have to spend quite some time figuring out what sequence of topics would work best, keeping in mind that some trainees are not quite up there with mathematical or language understanding skills. One has to take care not to do a slipshod job of it. I can well imagine a scenario when an educator just phones his classes in, so to speak, after a few months or so. We have all seen that happen too often.


Inappropriate Distance Learning Programmes (DLP) at sea: Considering that the trainees will spend approximately half the time on a ship as compared to their seniors a generation ago, and considering that shipboard watchkeeping procedures, equipment, regulations and operations are now infinitely more complex (and shortmanned), a trainee concentrating on his DLP schedule on board instead of practical stuff is clearly being poorly trained. At sea, I have barred cadets’ DLP study on the bridge (a common practice) on many a ship and stressed practical watchkeeping instead. I feel quite strongly that Masters must ensure that cadets use the truncated time they have on board today to learn the practices of seamanship rather than the theory that a DLP tends to stress. There is enough time for academics in the months that they are slated to spend in college Post Sea. Unfortunately, unless the so called DLP training programmes are revised, this problem cannot be completely addressed; in any event, one cannot learn navigation or ROR through a correspondence course! Present DLP schedules require too much time to be spent on books and notes in air conditioned accommodation and not nearly enough time out in the salt air.


Poor onboard training: This, in my view, is a biggie, and I have been as guilty as anybody else while at sea here. Firstly, what senior officers often fail to appreciate is that general academic competence of trainees is often lower than they were, say, twenty years ago, simply because the people who do better academically do not come out to see anymore. Additionally, the trainee has been sent on board with just a smattering of knowledge after three months of a Pre Sea mish mash. He is just a shade better equipped than the fresh ‘direct entry cadet’ of yesterday, while shipboard systems have become infinitely more complex. Another huge drawback in the system of training on board is this: almost all of it is devoid of any explanation or teaching. Result? We are not passing on the core concepts of seamanship to the next generation on ships anymore.


The ‘do this’, ‘take a compass error’ and ‘what is that ship doing?’ style of training was perhaps more appropriate for a time when crews were homogenous, when senior cadets taught juniors the ropes or when officers had the tradition (and time too, but is that just an excuse today?) of passing on knowledge to the young. Alas, not anymore. Multinational officers and single cadet ships have ensured that the trainee is on his own at a stage of his career when he needs mentorship the most.


Poor officer motivation on board: Another biggie. For example, is an Indian officer motivated enough to teach a Filipino cadet? Will the Master or Chief Engineer take some time to devise an appropriate practical programme for a trainee? Will he identify officers competent and willing to teach these youngsters? Will training be conducted as part of a routine and a job that must be done well or will it inevitably fall by the wayside on the hectic ships of today? These critical questions must be answered, because they go right to the bone of the problem.


Fortunately, as I will detail in an article next week, there are solutions. All that is required is the usual (and rare) common sense and commitment. We at Differentship Management have devised an operational business model that is workable, sustainable and promotes excellence in MET. We will roll it out next week for your scrutiny.


Meanwhile, I request you all to desist from calling what generally passes for marine education and training as quality education. That rose should be called by another name: one that does not smell as sweet.

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Different Strokes

At Differentship Management, we are as numbed by the alarming figures coming out of the industry as any of you. Shocked by the reports of ships laid up across the board, we are aware that VLCCs are being used for storage, as also new box ships. Storing oil and empties is cheaper on a laid up ship than in port now. We do not believe that the recent revival of the Baltic Indices is sustainable, because they are not backed up by improved figures coming out of the global economy. Quite the contrary.


Differentship does not believe that the old paradigms of marine recruitment, whether at sea or ashore, apply today. In fact, we have often criticised those prototype solutions as unsustainable at the best of times. The inability of most of the industry to maintain quality in the recent boom, or even produce the required supply of manpower, bears this thinking out.


After a fair deal of thought, therefore, Differentship has decided on the following course of action within the group. Our aim is the retention of excellence by promoting
long term mutually beneficial associations with our employees, both ashore and afloat.


We now make this plan public.



Strategically,

The execution of our plans will be made in a manner that is transparent to all employees, whether at sea or afloat.
The execution of our plans will be carried out in a legal and ethical manner. Our behaviour towards our employees has never been variable, or dependant on market conditions, and we see no reason to change that now.
We have, at present, 50 ships under management. Although this number can certainly decrease if conditions get worse, we intend to maintain our shore and floating staff at a level that will sustain this number with excellence.
We do not see great issues with financing Differentship’s initiatives. As we will show here, enough lard exists in the system that can be burnt off. Additionally, we have some out of the box plans to ensure economic sustainability.
We will pursue our new initiative with vigour for 3 years starting today. Although this initiative will be reviewed annually, our commitments made now to our employees will remain unchanged for 3 years.
The initial selection process of employees will be intensive, robust and discriminating. We will ensure that only excellent performers are identified. If in doubt, the new plan will not be offered to many.


Tactically

This is what we have started doing today:


Floating staff

A three year contract will be signed between Differentship and carefully selected floating staff that are willing to participate. The contract will be renewable at the end of three years. We are calling this a ‘permanent contract’.
Differentship will offer this permanent contract to 60 officers, Cadets and Crew of each rank. The balance of our requirements, if any, will be met by additional contractual seafarers, although we intend to have permanent employees wherever possible, subject to our overriding requirement of retaining excellence.
A penalty of a three months salary will be payable and incorporated in this contract, in case either party decides to renege. Our lawyers assure us that this is legally binding and enforceable. We hold ourselves to the same penalty, as a sign of our commitment.
Cadets will be offered full pay, whether at sea or not. We estimate that the cost of this, at 12,000 dollars a month, is well worth the future payoff of well trained officers within our fleet.
All other officers and crew will be paid 25% less salary (now called ‘new salary’) than they presently receive when sailing. A minimum of four months full salary will be guaranteed each year, in the event that the employee does not sail for four months.
When not sailing, all officers and crew will receive wages of 15% of the new salary each month when at home. In return, they agree to undergo online training programmes which we are in the process of finalising, from within the comfort of their homes. We guarantee our mariners more than five months salary every year with these initiatives (4 months seagoing plus 15% for 8 months). Of course, if one sails more than four months, one earns more.
These terms will remain in force for the three year period even if market wages collapse elsewhere, provided the employee does not take up any alternate employment.
Tenures on board will be determined by repatriation costs. We expect some flexibility in this regard from seagoing employees. Our intention, however, is to align these tenures with the contract system as it is followed today, where rank determines the length of seagoing time.
All other present terms and conditions now stand cancelled.
Annual bonuses will be payable depending on company performance to all employees, whether at sea or afloat.
Although a seagoing employee will remain subject to dismissal for fraud and gross negligence, we believe that with our robust selection process already in place, the chances of this are negligible. It does not bear repeating that we pride ourselves on being ethical, and so it will be in this eventuality. The process will be transparent to all employees and subject to peer review.


A simple calculation will show that seagoing staff will get the benefit of permanent employment for three years without a great drop in income. This will remain even if contractual wages collapse elsewhere.

Cadets will be assured employment for three years. Sea time requirements may take longer to complete if fleet size decreases; however, we will persuade owners to increase berths for cadets, which are relatively low cost.

Differentship will get the benefit of retaining performers and weeding out the non performing staff. We envisage that we will be in an excellent position to grow whenever the global economy turns around, as it eventually will. Meanwhile, we will strengthen bonds with our employees within the group.




Shore staff

As with seagoing staff, we will retain shore staff at a level that will support 50 ships. The retention will be based on performance alone. People asked to leave will be given three months notice with full wages.

The following will apply to retained shore staff

A three year ‘permanent contract’ similar to the one with floating staff will be signed. This will have similar enforcement penalties and bonus plans.
As with seagoing employees, shore employees will be subject to a 25% pay cut.
Traditionally, wages at sea have been considerably higher than shore wages, everything else being equal. Largely because of the different nature of work, this is also partly because a shore employee works almost throughout the year. With this reasoning in mind, Differentship will guarantee 6 months full wages to each shore employee (instead of four months offered for seagoing staff). In the event of a shore employee being ‘benched’, he or she will receive 35% of the new salary for the remaining period. This will remain in force for the three year period even if market wages collapse elsewhere, provided the employee does not take up any alternate employment.
Although a shore employee will remain subject to dismissal for fraud and gross negligence, as with seagoing staff, the process in this eventuality will be along identical lines outlined for the floating staff.



Finance, Austerity measures and miscellaneous initiatives

Move to smaller premises. Given collapse in real estate prices and rentals, this makes sense. Also because we envisage a leaner and meaner workforce.
Cost cutting on travel, unnecessary seminars and such expenses. Rollout of online training programmes as mentioned earlier.
New premises to be energy efficient. Functionality to replace flashy ambience. Office to exude a cheerful, professional and no nonsense atmosphere.
We envisage considerably lower recruitment costs after the conclusion of the initial selection, as we believe we will have a core of competent personnel, and a pool that will be growing. Lower attrition rates will give rise to many collateral advantages.
Streamlining of systems to minimise wastage of time, manpower and communication costs, especially between the vessel and the office.
Training programmes for shore and seagoing employees to be well thought, cost effective and sustainable.
Smart maintenance and storing on board. Dead stock to be minimised. Smart maintenance not to mean minimum maintenance, however.



Differentship believes that economic conditions will get worse before they get better. Salaries, too, will probably drop further. While we are locking ourselves in to a three year commitment with a base of higher salaries, we believe that our flexible approach with an annual minimum guaranteed package will offset some of these higher costs, and our austerity measures will do the rest.


Equally importantly, we believe that if Differentship has to come out of this recession poised for growth, we need to identify, employ, retain and train our core employee strength right now. Without people, we are nothing. Our initiative is aimed, therefore, at guaranteeing our performers ongoing employment with us. We are treating them as adults, and we know they will not disappoint us, or we them.


We are comfortable with our back of the envelope calculations on this. We believe that this is a sustainable and forward thinking way of surviving the hurricane that has hit the global economy today. We also believe that we will be idling at the runway, ready to take off, when the storm passes.


While our accountants are crunching the finer numbers, and while we will undoubtedly refine our thoughts as we go along, we will not allow electronic calculators to dictate our business plans in this recession.


We know how damaging it was to us last time this happened.
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Hubris and the Passion to Inertia index

(Authors foreword: Once upon a time, the kind of thinking put forward in this article was used by me in a software company I was responsible for, in India. In one particularly good period of four months, using these strategies, revenues at one office quadrupled as a result. Yes, four times)

We often talk about a lot of critical changes we need to make within the shipping universe to make it work far better. We talk of workable industry and seafaring bodies, practical regulation, government support, protecting seafarer’s welfare and enhancing their working conditions, officer shortages, criminalisation and the need to improve the maritime world’s profile in the eyes of the world. We talk about new ways of increasing profitability. We make grandiose plans and hold eloquent seminars and think we are furthering our cause.

In my considered opinion, we are banging our heads against the wall here, because what we do not do is address the one issue that is fundamental to making any of our initiatives work. That issue is, simply, the two contrasting attitudes of inertia and arrogance that simultaneously exist across the industry.


Most of us are bad actors in stereotyped roles here, hamming it up as we go along. Like the actor, we strike the right attitude, but it is often the weary attitude of surrender and inertia, or, if we are senior managers, arrogance bordering on hubris. Until we overcome these attitudes, we risk running into the same brick wall time and again. We see programmes and initiatives fall by the wayside of short attention spans and lack of spirit on one hand and a mandated authoritarian thinking on the other. We still persevere, though, because we are the salt of the earth, or at least of the sea. What we don’t realise is that doing the same thing again and again while expecting a different result is folly.


The participants in this endless drama are many, and I will be the first to say that most of them are well meaning. Unfortunately there are too many who are not: we have our share of the fly by night ship owners hidden behind flags of convenience and post box addresses and managers stripping maintenance budgets bare to help project lower annual budgets and increase their fleet sizes. We have the usual suspects, including mariners who are satisfied working badly in poor organisations because they are birds of a feather, flocking together in mediocrity and disinterest. Let’s leave these folk aside; the taste of wine is never in the dregs.


Let us address the majority of interested professionals instead. Why do we see so many initiatives peter out into mediocrity at their hands? Excellent beginnings are made and fall by the wayside. Agendas are born, nurtured into plans and murdered during implementation.
It is obviously not due to lack of hard work, for many work long hours at sea and ashore. Oddly enough, though, the flesh seems willing but the spirit seems weak. There is no passion at the workplace.



This weakness of spirit plagues us in our working lives and eats away at our souls. Aboard ships, it translates into bored watch keeping, poorly motivated crews and sloppy maintenance. Ashore, it translates into uncaring attitudes, uninterested managers and short term blinkered thinking. Like the actor, we are going through the motions. We are choosing mediocrity over vision, even over greatness.


I am convinced that part of the reason for poor motivation and dreary attitudes at sea is, simply, diminishing pride in seafaring as a career. The clear attitude among many seafarers is that no longer is there much to be said in favour of a seagoing career except the wages; shore leave bans, fatigue and criminalisation have seen to that. This feeling is across nationalities and is reinforced by the fact that company structures and managerial disdain ensure that a seafarer feels excluded from the organisation he is working for. Clearly, the seafarer is looking for something more than wages; something is missing from his life, and that something is passion.


Shore establishments display similar fault lines too often. I can’t recall when I last saw a shore setup which was passionate about the firm or the industry they were working for. Whether in booms or busts, most of us are efficient at best. We are usually not enthusiastic, though, and rarely are we ablaze and impassioned about our jobs. Seamen may come and seamen may go, but ship management and owners go on, sometimes lethargically, forever. Thoughts limited to salaries, bottomlines, profits and efficiencies do not transform businesses; they just squeeze out more dollars and cents from the existing ones. To transform a business one has to think beyond the mundane and execute beyond the ordinary. Where are the organisations which will transcend the routine and leapfrog into the future? After a few decades connected with shipping, I can’t see many.


It is my clear belief that organisations should involve their personnel, ashore or afloat, in transforming themselves. Shipping, perhaps because many of its managers are ex seafarers, tends to operate in rigid hierarchies, although there is some improvement at sea in this regard. Officers and crew are much more involved, perhaps because of often threadbare manning and overregulation, in what was earlier, traditionally, a Master’s domain. Mess, management and safety committees have democratised ships, though they don’t work well as often as I would like them to. The need to disseminate voyage, technical and administrative information coming in from shore (often too much of it) means that a Master risks going crazy trying to do it all himself. More people are involved in decision making than ever before. This process is in its infancy, sure, and is not half as strengthened as all of us need to make it. However, imperfect as it is, it is well underway.


Unfortunately, democratisation has not really taken off ashore in a big way. Too many managements are too top heavy in structures and in thinking. With regard to ship/shore affairs, too many of them separate ‘the ship’ from ‘the office’, (unfortunately, seafarers do this too) ignoring the fact that the organisation is nothing without the ship and shooting themselves in the foot because they ignore the hundred odd years of collective seagoing experience that the crew of each of their ships can bring to the table, if seafarers opinions were only asked. They discourage a Master’s suggestions for systemic changes. They ignore their own shortcomings, a potentially suicidal trait in any manager, by tuning out the fact that many of them have no recent seagoing experience. Finally and critically, they ignore the concomitant advantages a more involved relationship with seagoing staff would yield.


In the relatively short experience I have within maritime shore establishments, and in the many I have additionally seen at close quarters, this despotic attitude is not unusual. Scattered offices across many continents is really no excuse as our industry is hardly unique in this regard. The fact is that most other industries are much more inclusive today, except perhaps some old time labour intensive manufacturing ones. Many encourage employees, even relatively lower ranking ones, to come up with big ideas. Not just the ‘we could save money by switching off alternate lights’ ones, but much bigger, entrepreneurial ones. In fact, some of the more forward thinking companies even fund in house mentoring programmes towards this end, encouraging employees to branch off on their own. Our industry is light years behind in comparison.


If I were sitting in my old fictional office as CEO of the fictional Differentship Pvt. Ltd., I would be spending a fair amount of time trying to involve my employees in the company. I would be particularly thinking of ways I could involve my contractual employees at sea, but I would pay almost equal stress to my shore colleagues, even if they were permanently employed. I would encourage passion and discourage inertia above all else.


I would not demand loyalty, or even call bonuses ‘Loyalty Bonuses’; in any case, how can one have loyalty when one’s employees do not even feel attached to the company and even sometimes feel alienated from it? I would invite seagoing staff in their off times to act as ‘short time consultants’, encouraging them to come up with ideas, big and small, to transform Differentship economically and otherwise. I would invite all my employees ashore to do likewise. I would pay for the ideas that raise profit and profile; in fact, I would involve people in the execution of their own ideas.

I would involve those without big ideas in smaller ones or the ideas of their colleagues; nobody should feel excluded and everybody would get ample opportunity to get passionate about their work. Promoting employee growth would be high on my agenda; with it would come the collateral advantages of employee satisfaction, higher company profile and excellent word of mouth. I bet a lot of people would be talking about us. I bet the word would be out that if you are a ‘business as usual’ person, Differentship is not the place for you.


And I daresay each one of us at Differentship would be making more money. Ideas, passion and the efficiencies thrown up by employee involvement would see to that. After all, and especially if I gave them stock options to boot, it is their company. I bet employees would think twice about leaving the company; after all, they are having more fun here, and they are growing, personally and otherwise.


That, folks, is loyalty. It is not the subservient loyalty peddled by our industry today; this is much stronger. Other companies demand loyalty and are mocked. Differentship invites it and displays, without a shadow of doubt, that it values its people. Because it does so, it commands loyalty.


No improvements will take place in Shipping unless many of us have passion and a vision. Vision can be shared but the passion must emerge from within. It will emerge when senior managers encourage it instead of stifling it. It will emerge only when some of us dismount from our high horses and listen to our employees. It will emerge when employees grow in ways beyond just economic. And it will flourish when the vast majority of employees, whether ashore or afloat, discard their old snake skins of inertia and bored efficiency and come to work with a spark in their eyes. We will win when the passion to inertia ratio is high in each one of us.


Plodding along is not an option. We are already perceived as a backward industry; if we continue to trudge on the same beaten path we risk continued stagnation and being shut out from the consciousness of the rest of the world, with all the resultant disadvantages that we see already.



Although pride can be constructive, arrogance is self destructive. Arrogance bordering on Hubris, as the Greeks will tell you, leads to downfall.

And mixing inertia with hubris is a fatal cocktail.

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