Is the Seafarer a Boiling Frog

We are all talking about seafarer wellness these days. And during the COVID times this JARGON has been escalated to a different level. We have defined these wellness as

1-     Physical

2-     Mental

3-     Emotional

4-     Spiritual

5-     Social

While the first one is tangible, others are not so easy measure. So what so we do next, we want to see if the Seafarer is HAPPY. This starts a series a of questionnaires, interviews and consequent analysis to declare whether a seafarer is happy or not.

Would you like some body to tell you that you are HAPPY or NOT.

In one of the classes I am attending, I came across the System archetype called drifting goals. Which states that

 If a gap persists, corrective actions are taken to improve the current state and bring it in line with the goal. This forms the basic balancing loop (B1) at the heart of any system that strives for equilibrium. A delay between corrective action and actual state represents the fact that results may take from minutes to years to materialize, depending on the specific situation.

Of course, there is more than one way to close the gap. In the Drifting Goals archetype, a second balancing loop is driven by pressure to lower the goal. As the gap increases (or persists over a period of time), the pressure to lower the goal increases. If the pressure is high and persistent, the goal may be lowered, thereby decreasing the gap (loop B2).

The critical difference between the two loops is that lowering the goal immediately closes the gap, whereas corrective actions usually take time.

While this is quite technical a simpler explanation is the BOILING FROG SYNDROME: In the frog’s case, the goal is a desired body temperature. If the gap between this desired temperature and the water temperature is large, the frog will immediately take a corrective action and jump out of the water. But, if the temperature increases gradually, the gap between his ideal temperature and the water temperature widens slowly. As this happens, the frog’s perceived desired temperature may gradually drift higher. This closes the gap between desired and actual temperature, negating the need to take corrective action until it is too late.

The goal for shipping industry is to see the SEAFARER HAPPY, some the corrective actions we are taking are:

1-     Wellness Surveys

2-     Wellness Workshops and Webinars

3-     Wellness Help line

What we don’t realise that the seafarers has lost:

1-     Shore Leave

2-     Occasional Beer

3-     Time to self-due to additional Procedures and equipment’s like IMO 2020, BWTS, EGCS etc

4-     Burden of inspections and audits (Internal and external)

Slowly but steadily the seafarers has lost the above points and has been the BOILING FROG . This could have led to unhappiness

So are we choosing the B2 loop for our goal of seafarers wellness instead of addressing the more difficult B1

Ref: https://thesystemsthinker.com/drifting-goals-the-boiled-frog-syndrome