Fear or Repeat - Both Work

I’ve just read that a vessel that ran aground up in northern Scotland around Pentland did so because the officer on watch instead of looking out of the big clear things called windows, instead, had spent two hours on his mobile phone watching a movie. The investigation demonstrated that he had lost all situational awareness and didn’t even know what direction the vessel had been sailing in. The excuse of being cheap third world labour could not apply either because he was Dutch. And anyone who has worked with our wooden shod chums will have heard the saying, ‘If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much.’ I think it’s fair to say that many would beg to differ now.

Clearly, he was a fuckwit because everyone knows Google maps could have been set up to give him a warning if he wandered off track…

But this brings me to the issue of practice makes perfect. It sounds such a small thing but, it’s probably just about the most important thing you can do to ‘improve.’ And why I’m less than convinced that sitting in front of a computer or staring at a mobile is in any way going to help anyone achieve much unless they are a programmer or budding author.

It also takes us to the wider reality of an industry where checklists have taken over from understanding in the marine and offshore world and is driven by the desperate need to quantify everything in some way. No longer are we allowed to exist in an analogue world but instead a digital one. The problem is of course that the desire to control often degrades the ability to do something well.

Let’s use the analogy of the gym. You go there with the intention of looking like something from a Marvel superhero movie – minus the Spandex, I hope. All the blokes I know would look frankly horrifying in anything vaguely skin-tight although, some seem to be trying in their boiler suits. I digress.

 Putting aside the fact that to achieve that look you will need a bit of pharmaceutical help and the ability to walk past a pie shop, the act of repetitive training builds muscle. It does not, however do this in the way you think. Yes, the act of straining your muscles will cause some damage and when the repair process is done those fibres will be larger, but this is not the sole or even the main reason working out changes you. It’s more of a control issue. We humans are essentially trying to do sod all and conserve energy which, makes sense if your next meal is attached to the arse end of a mammoth and you might have to wait a bit in between dinners. To do this, the nervous system only fires the muscle fibres required to do the job and of course if you are dossing around at the back of the cave whilst your Neanderthal missus cooks dinner you don’t need to activate much in the way of muscles. By the way, I spent a bit of time in Southbank in Middleborough. When you read textbooks and they tell you Neanderthals died out with the last few finished off in what is now Gibraltar they are wrong. Still going strong in some places…

Now, going to the gym and overloading a bit forces the brain to get in touch with its nervous system and activate a few more fibres. The act of repetitive overloading progressively brings more and more muscle fibres to the party. The brain needs a bit more help in order to lift the lumps of metal off the ground in order to impress the bit of totty that is effortlessly lifting more than you can because she isn’t a beer swilling, Greggs Bakery fan.

As an aside, research has shown that in mixed gyms, men tend to work out a bit harder than ones which are male only. Not sure why, but I’m sure someone could come up with a theory…

Anyway, the point is that repetitive forced work or movement increases the ability of a human to do something.

And, which is exactly what we are reversing in our modern society where we divest our brains and body to computers and machines to such an extent that many people aren’t much more use than a cabbage. For graphic example of that randomly pick 100% of any group of politicians of any hue in any country.

Ever notice that your parents or grandparents can do mental arithmetic better than you can? Despite you having a degree in medieval tapestry? That’s because they didn’t have computers or calculators.

The reason this occurs is because they used their brain to do the work, not the electronic idiot in your hand. Their brains have been trained to do work that you cannot now do.

Checklists are another prime example of this and one that is very relevant to working at sea and in the oil industry. I reckon it would be possible to wallpaper the Moon with the number of checklists that are now routinely punted out. Many of which, would be far more useful hanging on a nail next to a bog.

Once again, think of the oldest people in your family. They didn’t write lists and reminders at all. They didn’t use Google Calendar either. They used their brains and this action did two things. Firstly, they learned how to remember stuff and secondly the stuff they needed to remember was immediately available for recall. This is a wonderful thing if you are faced with a bank of red lights in the middle of the ocean in a storm because instead of dumping a big brown one in your pants and being unable to work out what to do instead, your brain kicks into action. Sometimes that’s to run away as quickly as possible….

Checklists are the bane of everyone’s life at sea. I recently read a post on Marine Insight on Facebook with a link to a checklist of how to prepare an engine for starting. I was not alone in commenting that if an engineer a few weeks past cadetship is unable to work out how to prepare an engine for starting without a checklist then things have become properly fucked up. You should not need a bit of paper generated by someone with a flat arse to remind you to ensure you have lube oil in the sump.

It is the culture of control over the culture of competence that is currently in the ascendancy. This is something that pervades all aspects of society. There is a desperate need for oversight and control where there should not be any need. Not only does it reduce the ability of a person to do a job, it also removes any desire to do a good job and of course degrades the competence of that person to do it anyway. People work best when they are trusted to work and under some pressure to do it well.

That pressure is like working out at the gym when your brain starts to fire off more nerve cells to get more muscles working. Putting a person under the pressure of taking responsibility for their actions is the same. That pressure forces the person to think. To act and to do the job with care because they do not have the safety blanket of a bit of paper that describes in infinite detail how to do something. It removes the crutch from which they rely on to operate and thus begins the process of immunising that person against incompetence.

It turns that person into a valuable worker that wants to do a good job if nothing else for professional pride.

Many years ago, I was on a vessel (pipelayer) before the period when all work was dominated by paper. In seven years, I did two permits to work. In seven years, the ship had about two weeks downtime despite being an old heap compared to what is available on the market today. If I had presented the engineers or technicians with the checklists/permits/risk assessments that most are required to do now I would have been told in no uncertain terms to sod off. It was a ship staffed by the most competent, professional and hardworking people I have ever met. If extra hours were required to get a job done, then I would not have to ask because, automatically people would just stay on and do it. If the mention of getting a 3rd party contractor was brought up, someone would suggest a dawn meeting on the back deck with seconds available and a choice of weapons to be at hand for impugning their ability to fix anything.

This is because in the flaky term used today people were ‘empowered.’

Empowering is a much used and by and large a bullshit term because it’s not applied. My idea of empowerment is to point vaguely in the direction of a burned and broken bit of machinery and ask for it to be fixed. I would not expect to have to give out instructions as to how to use a spanner or turn a nut. My understanding of empowerment is that the person is trusted to be able to do their job and if there is a problem, to ask for help. Years ago, this was usually accompanied by the clarion call of ‘Job and Knock.’ For the youngsters out there, this was a double-edged sword. Once the challenge had been accepted, the engineers might well be doing a thirty-hour stint. On the flip side a four-hour job may well turn into a two-hour job and an early dart ashore to the nearest pub where ladies of negotiable affection and cheap beer was to be found. It’s astounding just how fast a job can be done when the possibility of a night of cultural exchange and a gallon of beer is on offer.

This reminds me of the infamous ‘Inclination Test’ that was done on a pipelayer in South Bank I worked on. The entire vessel’s compliment was kicked off the ship around ten in the morning and told not to come back until after the test was done around late afternoon. That was about 100 blokes up the road to the nearest pub. What transpired can only be described as an epic to rival that of War and Peace. At the time there were four usable boozers in Southbank. There was a fifth pub, but it was so bad and so scary that even hardened blokes who had worked offshore in the Atlantic wouldn’t go in it because they feared the people in there. I shit you not, the punters in there looked like something from Gotham Jail in a Batman movie. But harder. Much, much harder. As you can imagine no-one came back mid-afternoon. Not one person rocked up. One bloke arrived back at the ship at 0600 the next morning on the back of a milk float having drunk a verified thirty (30) pints of Guinness and eaten one bag of crisps. Happy days.

Many today would look at my generation as troglodytes who grunted a lot, drank too much beer and were not ‘woke’ enough to be part of the modern generation of ‘empowered’ youth. I’d argue that the words of my generation were a bit close to the wind, but the reality was a far more open and better working environment because nano-management practices were not exercised. 

As a cadet I was shown how to pump down an AC system. Once. I was then told that if I fucked it up, I would have my arse kicked if I had not killed myself first. I accept that this is a tad harsh, but the fact is that I watched and learned that process like a hawk looking at his next mouse sized meal in a corn field. To this day, thirty four years on I can vividly remember every detail of that AC system, the compressor, the valves and even the spanner I used. It is burned into my memory like the branding on a steer in an old cowboy movie. The colour of the compressor was eau de nil. There will be someone out there who will instantly know which company loved that stuff.

And this makes sense. Here’s another thing about the human brain. It does not in any way operate like a computer despite the analogies used regularly. You have short term memory and long-term memory and the brain operates in such a way as to utilise information stored as best it can. It is based upon the fact that humans descended from apes when being eaten was a genuine risk and the next meal not a given. You can only remember four things in your short-term memory. Scientists used to think it was six or seven but today they generally agree that you can remember four individual things in your short-term memory. It’s why you walk into a room sometimes and have no clue at all why you are there. You have forgotten what it was you wanted because four other things have superseded it.

But your long-term memory is different. A memory is often burned into your memory because it is associated with something stressful or highly desirable. My ape ancestor was probably quite keen on not getting eaten by a sabre-tooted badger so very quickly his or her brain would have the look, smell and environment where this might happen permanently imprinted. Whenever he or she (no one hundred genders in those days) encountered a situation where being on the menu was a possibility, immediately that situation was recognised. Likewise, when things appeared to be benign the brain never kicked in at all because it was a waste of nervous energy. That can be a problem as well because it also means that the brain stops warning you that something is dangerous if it has not tried to kill you. It’s why driving a car at massive speeds seems okay. Your brain has not noted that it’s dangerous even though it is because you are sitting comfortable in a nice warm environment and there isn’t a sodding great bear sitting in the back seat.

Incidentally, to anyone who thinks that Darwinism isn’t correct because apes are still around, ‘So how can we have come from them,’ understand this. The apes we see today are not our ancestors. They are our cousins and we descended from a common ancestor. Just saying.

Taking this and applying it to what we do at work, if we remove the stress of doing a job or task because of too much control or oversight, the human brain will not remember it unless it is repeated enough times to force it into long term memory. Using too many checklists, task plans, oversight and general control we are working against the human brain and its ability to do the work we ask of it. If we are going to force the mind into learning without stress, then it’s about repeating it again and again. It’s quite rare today for instance, to launch a lifeboat any more times than is required to meet the minimum standards which, is why when it is launched there is a fair bit of faffing around, a few mistakes and it takes quite a long time. When we used to use the lifeboats to go ashore on a beer run, they could be launched and recovered by half the blokes in a fraction of the time and more safely even when half in their cups. Practice or stress. This is how people learn.

Cast your mind back to times when you have been on a job and it went pear shaped big style. I’ll bet you remember just about every detail of what you did and what went wrong. That memory is associated with high levels of stress and therefore imprinted. To this day I remember with utter clarity the time I closed the inlet valve on a high-pressure steam driven Coffin feed pump. The sense of horror as the turbine started to slow down and the lights dim…

We’ve all been on one of those interminable so-called courses we all must do today in order to remain gainfully employed. I’ll bet that after ten minutes watching another Death-by-PowerPoint presentation you will have forgotten everything. Firstly, there is no stress that the brain can associate with what is being taught and secondly, remember the short-term memory thing? Yup. Four things. By time the bore up front has moved onto the next grim detail laden screen you will have forgotten almost everything from the earlier slide. This isn’t your problem. You have the brain of an ape and the person on stage isn’t likely to present you with anything threatening to worry about. Brain is thus, switched off. I guess a safety course could be done with a couple of hit-men sat at the back who would occasionally shoot someone when their attention dragged a bit. Without a doubt what was being said would very quickly become a long-term memory. Might be a bit hard to explain why some of the people on the course didn’t make it back to your company HSE geezer or his wife and kids even if the results were startlingly good for the rest. But, it’s something to consider….

Thus, if we lower the stress a little bit – but leave a some in place – when doing a job, the learning process will be far more effective. Back to the gym analogy. Put the person under a bit of duress and the ability improve will be far more effective. In our workplace the way that would apply would be to roll back the clock a bit. A job is to be done. Safety systems in place but allow the people to do the job in such a way as they are expected to complete it with a bit of their own initiative. It will give them a bit of stress; thus, the long-term memory will be populated and at the same time they will feel empowered to make a better fist of it.

It comes down to trust. Control and safety systems need to be in place but when this eviscerates trust – and by that, I mean it disenfranchises people from the work they are paid to do, you end up with a bunch of disgruntled demotivated ex-workers. The circle will then spiral inwards as this lack of trust erodes competence and eventually you are left with drones simply pulling a paycheck. Not what most companies would like I’m sure.

When people do a job where they are trusted to do it, where you arrive at is a highly motivated and very competent group of people. The checklist items are no longer bits of paper but instead have become deep rooted memory items that are burned into the brain forever. Or at least until that person carks it.

Of course, today we do need to be highly understanding of the need to be safe and of course to protect the environment. I’d argue that a sensible level of paperwork to cover the basics but allow people to learn, grown and become more competent through trust is far better than burying some poor sod in stuff that simply switches his or her brain off.

And turning off the mobile when on watch. That’s quite important as well it seems.