salty dog sporting a SCARF
This piece was in response to an assignment for Innovation Studio, a required class in the MBA in Design Strategy program at California College of the Arts. The assignment asked students to apply the management strategy presented by David Rock in his article “Managing with the Brain in Mind” to their personal experiences in an organization.
I am regular crew on an International One Design, a sailboat with an established fleet in the San Francisco Bay. The boat, built in 1937 in Norway, was ironically christened Youngster (also a riff on her owner's last name, Young). Youngster competes in 80 races a year, and I am aboard in excess of 60 of those.
Ron Young [1], Youngster's owner and skipper is a personality. The mention of his name inevitably elicits a reaction that falls on one of two extremes (no doubt owing to the fact that Youngster has been dismasted no less than five times as the result of race-course collisions). Ron has been sailing on the Bay since he first joined the Sea Scouts at the age of eight. He knows the Bay and its wind patterns and currents like the back of his hand, which incidentally bears a conspicuous scar from a shipboard mishap when he was fourteen. While his seamanship is unrivaled, his expertise, and subsequently Youngster's performance, is compromised by his leadership. He does not “manage with the brain in mind.” [2]
A sailing crew, whether racing or cruising, fits the Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith definition of a team to a tee: "A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable." [3]
Aboard Youngster, this translates to:
Small number of people 4-5 crewmembers
Complementary skills Designated positions: helmsman, tactician, jib trimmer, main trimmer, bowman
Common purpose and set of performance goals Ensure the safety of the vessel and its crew and win races
"Yeller" and "non-yeller" is a common dichotomy used to characterize a skipper's style. Sailing is a sport that demands lightning-fast responses to predictably unpredictable weather, equipment failures, and maritime traffic. Non-yellers respond with calm, cool, and collectedness. Yellers, with hysterical, hypertense, fly-off-the-handleness. Ron, Youngster's skipper, is a yeller.
His skippering style triggers what David Rock dubs "the threat response". [4] When something goes amiss, Ron brusquely bellows out an order. He roars the order repeatedly, at nanosecond intervals, until the task has been completed. (And true to form, Ron curses like a sailor: "F**k my dog! Jib, the f**k in!")
Rock explains the neuroscience of the “threat response” as “both mentally taxing and deadly to the productivity of a person" and "impair[ing] analytic thinking…and problem solving." [5] The initial "top-of-your-lungs" command alone triggers the threat response that impairs (quick) analytic thinking and problem solving. But the repeated, unrelenting roaring renders one utterly incapacitated.
This is the counter effect of what is needed or was intended. A vicious cycle ensues. The incapacitation prolongs the roaring, which in turn persists because of the incapacitation. As the crewmember most oft aboard, I am the regular target of Ron's vitriol. It makes no difference whether the task falls under the purview of my position or whether I am in the remote vicinity of the task that needs doing. With me, Ron abbreviates the full command to just my name, which he shouts over and over with the vehemence of an expletive.
Under sail, a boat transforms into a living, breathing being. Essential to her being is mindfulness. That mindfulness is born of the shared consciousness of the crew, a consciousness that the crew not only shares with one another but also with Youngster herself. This shared consciousness is only attainable with "serenity and concentration". Mindfulness fosters self-awareness. The threatened state throws the crew members out of sync with Youngster's movements, and she too is impaired to perform.
Frequently, out of (unduly impatient) exacerbation, Ron abandons the helm to do himself whatever it is that he wants doing. Nothing compromises boat speed more than abandoning the helm. Ron's "Forget it! I'll do it myself!" response along with his relentless harping conveys a multitude of disheartening messages to his crew.
David Rock identifies five particular qualities that enable members of a team to minimize the threat response: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. They can be expressed with the acronym SCARF. Here is how these characteristics apply to Youngster and thwart high-performance teamwork.
Status Ron's yelling is nothing more than an on-the-spot performance review. The content itself diminishes a crewmember's feeling of competency. In the heated delivery of the feedback, Ron wields his superiority. And in ultimately completing the task himself, he robs crewmembers of the status booster needed to master a new skill.
Certainty Sailing is inherently fraught with uncertainty. In the absence of routinized maneuvers, crewmembers contend with needless uncertainty in the face of uncertainty, which "diminishes memory, undermines performance and disengages people from the present." [6] Seamanship depends upon automatic muscle memory and keen attunement to the ever-changing conditions. Automaticity and attunement are the panacea to "panic and bad decisions". [7]
Autonomy Ron's incessant yelling of orders is deafening micromanagement. Ron intervenes before the crewmember has a nanosecond to act and succeeds in razing any exercise of autonomy. Unwittingly, Ron engenders the very behavior he bemoans: "Why am I the only one who notices these things?!!?!!!?"
On more than one occasion, so utterly demoralized was I by Ron's micromanagement that I purposely performed the task at a snail's pace or made no move to perform the task at all (only when I was certain that slow action or inaction would not jeopardize the safety of Youngster or her crew). This perception of reduced autonomy triggers a threat response that literally incites mutiny.
Equally, when micromanaging others, Ron is distracted from his own responsibilities as helmsman, compromising his own performance.
Relating IOD fleet racing is a social interaction around a common interest. When not in race mode, the Youngster crew enjoys bawdy repartee. (Bawdiness is reserved for on the water and ceases once we set foot ashore.) The crew socializes with one another and with other sailors in the fleet at après-race crew dinners at the yacht club. This socializing is recuperative for crew morale, bringing it out of the red after the on-the-water battering by Captain Ahab. Unfortunately, the yacht club does not spike its drinks with oxytocin, the “hormone secreted once people make stronger social connections in one another’s presence.” [8]
Fairness Feelings of fairness aboard Youngster are undermined by the blame game:
We lost on that rounding because you were not set up for the jibe.
How could you not know we needed to round the mark to port?
Don't make me have to do everything!
The crew commiserates over Ron's flagrant finger pointing and inability to admit when he is wrong or has treated people poorly. When the leader of a team becomes the common enemy, "trust and collaboration cannot flourish" [9] and the team's common goal is marred.
Lest you think that the previous 1000 words was a vent devoid of proaction, I initiated a program to improve shipboard operations at the beginning of the sailing season. I am no expert in this field, but through my work I have become versed in theories and approaches to routizinizing habits and modifying individual and organizational behaviors. Hearing me talk about my reading, Ron explicitly requested that I spearhead this effort.
Borrowing a page from the Switch [10] playbook, I created checklists for every maneuver: tacking, jibing, spinnaker set, and rounding up wind. The checklist addresses uncertainty, increases automaticity, and frees up neural energy for the unexpected. The checklist is recited while each maneuver is performed. This gives crewmembers more autonomy to perform their specific role in the maneuver and learn when to pick up the slack, need be. I created lamented cards that enumerate the general and maneuver-specific responsibilities of each of the five positions. For example:
Jib Trimmer: Spinnaker Set
Raise topping lift
Release foreguy
Slack backstay
Remove jib sheet from winch and secure in jam cleat
Put spinnaker sheet and guy on winch
Raise spinnaker halyard
To alleviate micromanagement and cease the incessant repetition of a command, I have established the following on board communication protocol: When Ron calls out a command, the responsible crewmember repeats the command to confirm that it was received and that the task is being completed.
Ron "Trim the f***ing jib!"
Jib trimmer "Trimming the f***ing jib!"
I have implemented the regular practice of sailing in silence, only speaking when essential. Sailing in silence fosters the serenity and concentration essential to mindfulness and the shared consciousness of vessel and crew. What has helped this practice is ensuring that a dedicated tactician is aboard. Ron often performs the roles of both helmsman and tactician and as a result performs neither well. Manic as he is, Ron is practicing the patience to give crewmembers time to complete his requests before doing them himself. Already he has observed that autonomy begets accountability.
It goes without saying that my goal in leading this charge is to cultivate an on-board atmosphere that offers the crew peace of mind, not duress or panic. My ulterior motive is to rally the troupes toward the goal of qualifying for the International One Design Worlds in Norway next summer. I have never sailed in a fjord and am overdue a trip back to my motherland besides.
The Rock article affirmed my own insights about maritime management. I found it particularly encouraging that neuroscientists have discovered "the brain to be highly plastic". [11] Wooden boat loyalists frown upon plastic, the nautical synonym for fiberglass, but in this case plastic is cause to celebrate. It refutes the long-held belief that "You can't teach an old [salty] dog new tricks." If I have anything to do with it, my old salty dog will be sporting a SCARF.
[1] Ron Young approved the publication of this analysis.
[2] Rock, David, “Managing with the Brain in Mind.” Strategy and Business. Issue 56, Autumn 2009.
[3] Katzenbach, Jon R. and Smith, Douglas K. “The Discipline of Teams”. Harvard Business Review. Best of HBR 1993.
[4] Rock, David, “Managing with the Brain in Mind.” Strategy and Business. Issue 56, Autumn 2009.
[5] Ibid, p. 4.
[6] Ibid, p. 6.
[7] Ibid, p. 7.
[8] Ibid, p. 7.
[9] Ibid, p. 8.
[10] Heath, Chip and Dan. Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard. New York: Crown Business. 2010.
[11] Ibid, p. 5.
